


What's Behind and What's Before

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Genre: Alcohol, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bittersweet Ending, Blood and Injury, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Aid, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Injury Recovery, Kissing, M/M, Nostalgia, Past Relationship(s), Post-After The Revolution, Post-Canon, Reconciliation, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-04 00:24:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14580909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: "Kyouichi has felt that surely the structure of his childish memories must have given way to the passage of time, must have collapsed on itself as the years brought him into greater knowledge of his own identity; to step through the unchanged front gate and into the same space his memories evoke is like stepping into the impossibility of a dream." After the revolution, Kyouichi and Touga look for a beginning.





	1. Ache

It’s strange to see how little everything has changed.

It’s been years. Kyouichi can remember the details of this house only in memory gone foggy with the haze of childhood to cast everything vague and brighter than it was in truth; he’s pushed away what nostalgia he thought clung to the thought of this house and its occupants. It’s just another house, just another pair of people, relics of a past Kyouichi has little interest in revisiting. It was never as bright as he remembered it, never as warm as it seemed even at the time: all was an illusion built on sand, unsteady as a house of cards and ready to crumble to dust at the first breath of reality. Kyouichi has felt that surely the structure of his childish memories must have given way to the passage of time, must have collapsed on itself as the years brought him into greater knowledge of his own identity; to step through the unchanged front gate and into the same space his memories evoke is like stepping into the impossibility of a dream, like laying hands to the transient color of a rainbow.

There’s a tug at Kyouichi’s arm, a gust of a breath like a laugh too gentle to bear the strain of sharing. “You can’t give way on me now” and that voice is as strange as the house, it plugs directly into the curve of Kyouichi’s spine to short-circuit all his thoughts. When he turns his head to see the man standing alongside him Touga is looking at him with soft eyes and a curving mouth, as if he’s stepped straight forward from one of those dreams Kyouichi left behind along with the rest of his foolish fantasies. “At least let me get you inside before you succumb to your injuries.”

Kyouichi’s jaw sets, his shoulders tense, and this is as familiar as the rest, like the years of deliberate effort he’s put into easing himself into a better person were shed at the front gate along with his hold on reality. “I’m not going to collapse on you,” he snaps in a voice from his past, the bleeding edges of a wound he thought long-since scarred to invisibility. He straightens over his own feet, ignoring the jolt of pain that radiates up from his side as he jerks to pull his arm back from where it’s draped around Touga’s shoulders. “I can see myself home as well as not. I don’t need to impose on your hospitality.”

Touga closes his fingers tight where he’s been bracing Kyouichi’s arm around his shoulders, gripping hard enough to stall out the other’s attempted retreat. “Don’t be petty,” he says. His voice is soothing, dark and sweet like honey; Kyouichi can feel the persuasion of it like gentle fingers stroking against the back of his neck. “You were hurt on my behalf. The least I can do to repay you is to see you healed before you go.”

“You’re _finally_ back.” The words are sharp, pitched high and piercing, and Touga turns at once in answer to them. Kyouichi is looking too, reflex overriding his petulant frustration as he moves to react to the newcomer; in the structure of the present setting it’s not even a surprise to see Nanami striding forward from the shadows of the main house. Kyouichi knows her at a glance, would even if the edge on her voice didn’t give her away, but she _is_ different, from the pinned-up twist of her hair to the clinging sleek of the dark clothes she’s wearing. Her face bears more lines than it used to, at the forehead and against her mouth, but then maybe that’s just a product of the frown she’s turning on her brother as she crosses the courtyard.

“I’ve told you not to leave your girlfriends wandering around the house,” Nanami is saying as she comes forward. “I didn’t know when you would be back so I sent this one home. If you want to call her back--”

Touga waves a hand to dismiss this subject outright and cut off the pattern of Nanami’s words. “That’s not important,” he says easily. “Look who I met, Nanami.”

Nanami looks away from her brother and to Kyouichi instead, her frown still tugging her mouth into a pout. Her expression melts away on contact, all the tension in her face giving way to shock instead, and for the span of a heartbeat the slack surprise in her expression makes her look like a little girl again.

“Kyouichi,” she says, breathing over the other’s name with too much surprise to give it full voice. “What are you doing here?” Her gaze drops from his face to the bloodstain seeping into his clothes and she takes another step forward, her frown reemerging but with more concern this time. “Why are you bleeding?” She looks up to Touga again, her eyes wide with the beginnings of concern as she glances over her brother’s unruffled appearance. “Are _you_ hurt? What happened?”

“Never mind that,” Touga says, and Kyouichi can hear the resonance of the student council on his voice, can almost smell the heavy weight of roses in the air. “I’ll get Saionji taken care of.” The arm he has braced around Kyouichi’s waist slides, his fingers settling close against the unbroken line of Kyouichi’s side to pull the other in against him. “We’ll have him stay here while he heals.”

Nanami blinks. “Okay,” she says. Touga is pulling Kyouichi forward without waiting for her response; Nanami steps back and out of the way of their forward motion even as her gaze lingers on the two of them. Kyouichi can feel the curiosity in her eyes, can feel the weight of unvoiced questions in the air between them, but Touga doesn’t look back, just keeps moving forward with careful intent to urge Kyouichi up and into the house itself.

“We’ll need to wash and bandage the wound,” Touga says as he leads Kyouichi inside, sounding nearly conversational in spite of the subject matter. “You should stay a few days just to make sure you heal well. Can you manage the stairs?”

“I’m fine,” Kyouichi says. The walls around him swallow the sound of his voice to strip it of its adult weight and throw him back over the years to his youth, as if the house itself is trying to push him back into the past where Touga’s touch was as gentle as it seems now, when he still believed the lie of the other’s smile. It makes him feel off-balance and wrongfooted, until he would be glad of the support of Touga’s arm around him were it anyone else’s, until he’s not sure he’s not anyway. Kyouichi fixes his eyes on the stairs before him and frowns attention at them as a better point to fix himself than the heat of Touga’s arm around his waist and Touga’s fingers curled against his wrist. When he swallows it feels like he’s waging war against the strain in his throat, like he’s fighting back against the memories trying to choke him into the silent desperation of childhood. “I can take care of myself. I’m not _that_ badly hurt.”

“I know,” Touga says, still in that unwarrantedly gentle tone. Kyouichi hates it. It’s making his mind wander down paths long overgrown, unlocking memories he would rather keep buried more for what they promised than what they truly were. “I’m not doing this because you need me to.”

“Then why?” Kyouichi’s voice is too loud, it tears through the cobwebs of memories and forces them into the present. His fingers curl to a fist; Touga must be able to feel the flex of the motion in the tendons under his hold, but he doesn’t draw his hand away and doesn’t shift his grip from the casual contact it is providing at the moment.

“Because I want to,” Touga says. Kyouichi’s gaze slides to the other’s face in spite of himself, his attention pulling up with masochistic habit to seek out the signs of insincerity in the other’s mouth, eyes, forehead. But Touga’s expression is relaxed, his gaze fixed ahead of them and his mouth curved onto a smile soft as the white of a bandage wrapped around a hurt hand, and Kyouichi can feel all his brittle resistance give way with nothing for him to break himself upon. Touga’s gaze slides sideways, his eyes meet Kyouichi’s for a moment, and even then his smile just looks soft, like his words are nothing more than truth.

They’re nearly at the top of the stairs. Kyouichi turns away from Touga’s face, turns his back on that affection as uncanny as the shadows of the familiar house trying to drag him back into the too-small self he was when he was last here. “Where are you taking me?”

“We’re nearly there,” Touga reassures him. His hand at Kyouichi’s waist shifts to pull against the other and Kyouichi follows Touga’s guidance before he can think of the action. There’s a whisper of familiarity in the back of Kyouichi’s head as Touga lets his hand go to reach for the doorhandle, but it’s only when Touga has switched on the light overhead that Kyouichi recognizes the space around them.

It’s his room, the room he always stayed in on those rare nights he stayed with the Kiryuus through the darkness of the evenings. Nothing has changed, from the bed that was always too large with just him in it to the weight of the rug laid across the floor where he and Touga would lie making monsters of the shadows around them until exhaustion finally drew them into sleep right where they were. It’s enough to stall Kyouichi’s footsteps in the doorway, to tremble at the strength of his knees, as if this room is demanding a retreat from the years and the height he has come to, as if he must collapse to shrink himself into the person he once was, when _friend_ was more than a curse at his lips.

“Are you alright?” Touga’s voice is low, a murmur between them as if he’s commiserating, as if he is sharing in the ghosts that are haunting Kyouichi’s vision. His hand comes back to Kyouichi’s wrist, his fingers squeeze to press comfort to the other’s skin. “Come, let’s get you off your feet.” His arm pulls, his lead urges, and Kyouichi steps forward with no other option but obedience. The shapes of memory give way to the hard edges of reality, childhood laughter melts to present pain, and when Touga leads Kyouichi towards the edge of the bed Kyouichi goes without protest of voice or body. He feels dizzy, as lost as if he’s a stranger in his own shape, as if he’s dreamed the last years of his life, until when Touga urges him to sit his obedience comes as more of a collapse than a careful descent. His arm slides free of Touga’s neck, his shoulders slump in and forward, and when he lifts his hand from his side it’s to press against the ache of his injury as if to deliberately paint his fingers with the red of his blood.

“It’s opened up again,” Touga says. His voice seems distant and strange; it’s startling for Kyouichi to glance up and find the other on his knees at the edge of the bed, one hand reaching out to press atop Kyouichi’s own. Touga’s forehead is creased, his mouth soft with the appearance of concern; he looks as he used to after their sparring matches, when the dug-in lines of focus in his expression gave way to childish sympathy. Kyouichi stares at him for a moment, feeling as if he really has stumbled backwards in time; and then Touga’s expression hardens into determination, and reality reforms around them even as he pushes to his feet to stand at his full height over Kyouichi before him.

“I’ll get some bandages and water to rinse it clean,” he says. “Take off your shirt, I’ll be right back to wrap it up.” He moves without waiting to see Kyouichi obey his command; he’s certain of himself once more, as secure in his own dominance as he was in high school. Kyouichi watches him go, turning his head to track the flutter of crimson hair from under the shadow of his own lashes; and then Touga draws the door shut behind him, and Kyouichi is left alone.

He undresses slowly. The injury at his side is bleeding again, a slow trickle of red that clings to his shirt as if in protest; it takes him a minute to work it free, and that only with the aid of a grimace and a handful of hissed curses. He’s glad Touga is gone; he doesn’t want an audience for the struggle of this process, and twice over he doesn’t want it to be Touga. There are enough memories caught in the corners of this room and winding tendrils around Kyouichi’s thoughts as it is; he doesn’t need to go looking for more in the prickling aware of Touga’s eyes on him as he slides his clothes free of his skin. He can be clumsy, like this, can fumble his way free without self-consciousness, and even when he works himself loose he leaves his shirt crumpled on his lap and his hair tangled around his shoulders to strip away any kind of aesthetic appeal from the moment. He’s just himself, still bearing the bruises of his own clumsiness even now, when he thought he had left this part of his life behind him, and whatever else he may be revisiting he is done with pretending grace for Kiryuu Touga’s approval.

“How is it?”

Kyouichi jumps in spite of himself. He didn’t hear Touga come in the door; he doesn’t know if it was the dull, ocean-deep ringing of memory in his own head that deafened him or if the other was aiming for breathless silence in his approach, but either way Touga is here, now, far closer than Kyouichi expected him and leaning in before the other has a chance to brace himself. Kyouichi feels himself left vulnerable by his own thoughts, stripped down to far more nakedness than what his absent shirt gives him, and he can’t help his first instinct to flinch back and away from Touga’s reaching hand. He has a pang of near-guilt as soon as he moves, as soon as he makes sense of the impulse that has left Touga’s fingers hovering in midair in the space between them, but Touga is huffing an exhale that pulls into a smile at his lips without any visible frustration.

“It’s okay,” he says, and he reaches to brace himself at the edge of the bed instead so he can fold to his knees alongside Kyouichi. “I won’t hurt you.”

Kyouichi scoffs. “I’m not afraid of you.”

Touga smiles without looking up to Kyouichi’s face, the curve of his lips as knowing as if he can hear the lie. “Good,” he says. “You shouldn’t be.” Kyouichi looks at Touga sideways, casting his gaze through the tangle of his hair as if that will sufficiently disguise the focus of his gaze, but it doesn’t make a difference; Touga’s ducking his head without glancing up so he can reach for the damp cloth in the bowl of water he’s set at the floor alongside the bed. His hair falls into a sleek curtain in front of his face, obscuring his expression in a wave of scarlet, and Kyouichi finds his gaze caught at the weight of it, swept along the fall of color like he’s trailing it back into the past, when he still leaned in close enough to be caught in that same curtain instead of on the other side of it. Touga lifts his head and his hand at once, looking back up to Kyouichi as he raises the damp cloth, and Kyouichi turns his head aside entirely to fix his gaze on the wall instead of on Touga before him.

The cloth stings against the open edges of the wound, sharply enough that Kyouichi can feel his shoulders tense in instinctive response to the flare of pain, but he doesn’t flinch away this time. This contact is necessary, the pain a part of the healing to come, and besides he doesn’t want to draw any more of that comfort past Touga’s lips. He sets his jaw instead, bracing his teeth tight together to make a prison for any sound that might try to break free, and he submits to the spreading ache of friction as Touga cleans half-dried blood away from his wound.

The room is very quiet. Kyouichi can hear the soft sound of the water against the edge of the bowl when Touga rinses the cloth for another pass, can hear the sound of Touga’s breathing steady and smooth; he can hear the sound of his own heart thudding in his chest, a clock to count the passage of all the minutes, weeks, years that have passed since Touga last touched him like this. It’s been a lifetime since then, so long that Kyouichi had forgotten the press of Touga’s touch, had forgotten how gentle the other’s movements always are; but the memories come back at once, as if they were only ever locked behind a door and waiting to emerge at a call. Even the ache is familiar, that feel of a bone-deep bruise throbbing out across the strain of his too-tense body in time with his beating heart and the drag of Touga wiping blood from his skin, conscientious even as he causes unavoidable hurt.

“It’s been a long time since I did this for you.”

Touga’s words echo Kyouichi’s thoughts so entirely for a moment it’s hard to tell if he’s spoken at all, if it wasn’t just the illusion of memory murmuring against the weight of Kyouichi’s hair. Kyouichi hesitates, unwilling to answer what may be no more than an echo; and then there’s a touch against his skin, the press of elegant fingers sliding over the curve of his ribs to brace him to steadiness, and he looks down in spite of himself. Touga is watching the motion of the cloth sliding warmth across Kyouichi’s skin, his gaze fixed on the steady pull of his hand, but there’s a smile at his lips, the curve of it so gentle it looks almost unconscious. The expression has the same effect as Nanami’s shock: it flickers time backwards over Touga’s features, reverts him to the dark-eyed boy with beautiful hair and strong wrists that bruised Kyouichi’s fingers for a day and his heart for long years.

Those injuries have faded, Kyouichi has told himself, he has found the means to mend himself to health in the years since graduation; but he can feel a twinge across his knuckles as he looks at Touga’s hair, pain remembering itself to match the ache of nostalgia in his chest. Kyouichi’s chest tightens, his fingers curl, and he turns his gaze aside again, fixing his eyes on the blank of the wall while he counts heartbeats to prove the passage of time and tries to convince himself it’s only his skin Touga’s touch is reaching.


	2. Anecdotal

“There,” Touga says, sounding pleased with himself as he settles the last loop of bandage close around Kyouichi’s body. “That’s the best I can do for you. How does it feel?”

“It hurts,” Kyouichi says. The words are more aggressive than he intends them to be, they grate to blood at the back of his throat; but his mature self-assurance has disintegrated under the pressure of nostalgia, and all he can recall of his identity is made of broken glass and savage defensiveness. All he can manage are short, broken-off answers, snappish as if Touga had slapped him across the face rather than bandaged his wounds with hands far more gentle than they have any right to be. Kyouichi thinks he might find more composure to respond if Touga had lost his temper and given him the blow he knows he at least mostly deserves, but even now Touga just rocks back on his heels and smiles resigned amusement up at the other.

“I _am_ sorry,” he says. “I never intended for you to be injured, Saionji.” He reaches out over the distance between them, his fingers stretching towards the white of the bandage around Kyouichi’s chest like he intends to stroke sympathy across it. “I wouldn’t have asked that of even my oldest friend.”

Kyouichi’s jaw sets. When he moves it’s to swing his hand to catch and shove Touga’s aside, to push the contact away even as he pulls away with deliberate intent. “Good to know,” he pushes past tight-set teeth. “I’ll be sure to mention it if I ever see them.”

Touga lets his hand fall in surrender to Kyouichi’s force, but even then the pained smile at his lips doesn’t flicker as he gazes up at the other in front of him. “Saionji,” he sighs. “I have always been your friend.”

Kyouichi blinks hard. He doesn’t want to have this conversation again, doesn’t want to revisit the scars of this particular wound, doesn’t want to disinter the tears he left to dry on the sand of reality. But his eyes are burning, his throat is tight, and when he speaks he has to cough before he can find the space to give clarity to his words. “Friendship runs both ways.”

“And I don’t merit yours?” The words sounds rhetorical, even if Touga didn’t mean them that way; Kyouichi sets his jaw tighter and keeps looking at the wall instead of at Touga in front of him. There’s a pause, a moment of silence that would be comfortable with someone else and that feels like a drawn bowstring between them; then Touga huffs an exhale that tips closer to laughter than hurt.

“Oh, Saionji,” he says. There’s a touch at Kyouichi’s knee, a glancing weight of fingertips there and gone before Kyouichi can jerk back and away from it, before Kyouichi can decide whether he wants to pull away or not. “You really haven’t changed at all.” That gets Kyouichi to turn, to hiss frustration past his teeth at this casual dismissal of all his efforts, but Touga is ducking his head to look down as he gets to his feet, and there’s no one to see Kyouichi’s response at all.

“You can put your shirt back on,” Touga says, with as much regal certainty on his tone as if he holds the deciding vote in how much clothing Kyouichi wears. Kyouichi’s fingers tighten on the shirt in his hands, his arms flex with the vague thought of flinging it into the other’s face, but Touga is shaking his hair back and still talking without waiting for a response. “Or I can bring you something clean to wear, if you’d prefer. We’re nearly the same size.”

Kyouichi stares up at Touga for a moment, struck dumb by this casual offer and the bite of condescension at one at the same time. Touga pushes his hair back over his shoulder, smoothing the weight of it down across his back before he turns his head to consider Kyouichi again; he smiles to meet the other’s gaze, lips curving on heat enough to match the humid shadow of his lashes over his eyes. Kyouichi can feel himself go hot all over his skin, can feel his body responding to the weight of that gaze even as his heart clenches on something like agony in his chest, and when he moves it’s all at once, in a sudden, jerky motion that gives away his own desperation even as he pulls his shirt in towards himself.

“I don’t want your charity,” Kyouichi hisses, and he shakes out the crumpled fabric in his hands so he can wrench it back around his shoulders and hold the loose ends closed over his bandaged chest. “This is fine.”

Touga’s mouth curves up at the corner, tipping itself towards open amusement, but: “Suit yourself,” is all he says, the words as gentle as the weight of his touch. He doesn’t linger to watch Kyouichi do up the line of buttons on his shirt; he just collects the bowl of water now dyed pink by Kyouichi’s blood, and the unused bandages and clothes, and moves towards the door without looking back. Kyouichi watches him for a moment, feeling himself going cold as if with the advent of night in spite of himself; and then Touga pauses by the doorway, and Kyouichi looks down at once to scowl at the buttons of his shirt. He doesn’t look up, even when he hears the sound of the door opening; it’s only once it’s closed again, and once his shirt is buttoned entirely up to his neck once more, that he raises his head to frown at the door.

It’s a few minutes before Touga returns. Kyouichi spends it with his arms crossed over his chest, frowning at the familiarity of the room around him and composing words to meaning in his head. He needs a response, needs something clear enough to break him free of this illusion of his own childhood desires, of the bittersweet nostalgia of immature dreams; this is no more real than it ever was, less, now, with extra years of distance to form the chasm between them. They aren’t friends now any more than they ever were, their adult lives have only further contributed to that, and when the door opens once more Kyouichi is turning with his mouth open to offer rejection, to retreat back to the cold resignation that he built from the ruins of disappointed hope.

“Are you decent?” Touga calls, speaking lightly even as he steps forward into the room without waiting for an answer. His gaze lands on Kyouichi from across the span of the room, seeking the other out with as much ease as if Kyouichi is sitting in a spotlight; when he steps forward to hold the door open behind him it’s without looking away from the other at the bed. “Come in, Nanami.”

Nanami follows in Touga’s wake. She’s changed since Kyouichi saw her at the front of the house; she’s in a dress, now, a vivid, saturated violet that brings out the pale of her hair and the shine of the jewels in the necklace she’s wearing. She looks like she’s on her way to a party, like she’s arriving to be announced as a guest of honor; her elegant maturity is entirely out of place in the haunted shadows of the room around them. Kyouichi’s shoulders tense on discomfort, his mouth pulls onto a frown in spite of himself, but Nanami comes in without hesitating in carrying the tray of food she has in her hands.

“I made dinner,” Nanami says, speaking mostly over her shoulder to her brother and with only a glance in Kyouichi’s direction. “You can eat up here so you don’t have to come up and down the stairs.” She comes forward to the end of the bed, her gaze fixed on the comforter instead of on Kyouichi, and she sets the tray down with deliberate focus, as if she thinks it may be in some danger of spilling if she’s not careful. She keeps her attention on her hands, frowning intention at her movements as she makes them; it’s only as she’s straightening to press her palms against the smooth of the dress around her hips that she looks up to meet Kyouichi’s gaze. Her expression is nearly a challenge, would be the opening to a duel in other circumstances, but there’s a crease at her forehead, something that shifts aggression towards the beginning of concern left unvoiced in the air between them.

Kyouichi makes an attempt towards a truce. “Thanks.” The word comes strange and feels odd in this context, caught between these people, but it seems only appropriate to give to the almost-stranger the girl he once knew has become.

Nanami’s frown softens marginally. It’s a tiny difference, barely a shift at her mouth, but when she ducks her head into a nod it seems sincere, if awkward. “You’re welcome.”

“You should eat with us,” Touga suggests. He’s come forward from the door while Nanami was setting the tray down; now he reaches to rest a hand at her shoulder with casual intimacy. “We could have dinner together, all three of us, just like old times.”

Nanami shakes her head. “I can’t,” she says, and she steps sideways and away from Touga’s touch. “You know I’m going out tonight.”

“Come on,” Touga wheedles. “Surely you can spare time to catch up with our old friend?”

Nanami frowns. “I’m not going to cancel my date,” she says; and then, with somewhat more softness as she glances back at Kyouichi, “I’ll be back later. We can talk then.”

“Alright,” Touga says, as easily as if he had never made the offer in the first place. “Be sure to pass along my love.”

Nanami ducks her head. “Yes,” she says; and then, without even looking sideways, “Goodnight, Kyouichi.” She turns towards the door at once, without waiting for a reply, and Kyouichi is left with nothing but clumsy silence to offer in answer.

Touga heaves a sigh as soon as the door closes behind Nanami. “Too bad,” he says in a tone that doesn’t do justice to the words. He turns back towards Kyouichi, lifting a hand to sweep the weight of his hair back behind his ear as he comes closer to sit at the far edge of the bed. “I suppose we’ll have to make a picnic of it ourselves.” Kyouichi glances through his lashes at Touga, trying to pick apart the ease of the other’s words into some measure of sincerity and sarcasm, but if there’s any of the latter it doesn’t show at the curve of Touga’s lips or in the grace of his movements as he arranges the dishes on the tray across the smooth spread of the bed between them. Kyouichi watches him for a moment, caught in spite of himself by the elegance of Touga’s movements, like the unhurried rhythm of a kendo routine with the smooth line of a shinai, and then Touga’s gaze swings up, a sudden blow to crush a winning point against Kyouichi’s aching chest.

“Here,” Touga says, and holds out a plate of food. “You’ll need to replenish your strength to heal.”

Kyouichi would like to refuse. There’s a part of him that wants to overturn the plate in Touga’s hand, to upend the gracious hospitality and shatter this facade of friendly reminiscence that has been built in the shadows around him. He thinks he might, if he weren’t injured, if he knew he could manage the stairs back out to the front door without collapsing; but he feels shaky even sitting up, and he doubts he could make it to the door unassisted. It’s a good excuse, anyway, a better one than facing the truth: that Touga’s dark eyes have always been magnetic, that the red of Touga’s hair has always been a flame Kyouichi can’t help but burn himself against. He reaches out to take the plate instead and turns to fix his attention on the meal as a better focus.

The food is good. Kyouichi thinks it might just be that he’s hungry, or perhaps that he’s stressed enough that an excuse to occupy his hands and thoughts is a relief in and of itself; but either way each bite is a comfort, every minute that passes eases some of the strain in his shoulders. By the time he’s finished his first serving he’s relaxed enough to admit to wanting a second, and when he reaches out to serve himself Touga takes the plate from him with unobtrusive grace to save him the reach. Kyouichi watches Touga for a minute, feeling the burden of the other’s hospitality and the quiet of the room press against him before he clears his throat at last.

“So,” he starts, fumbling for an olive branch of curiosity as Touga looks back to him. “How are...things.” He waves his hand to encompass the room, the house, Touga himself. “You’re doing well?”

Touga’s smile is the same as it always was: warm, inviting, sweet as ambrosia and nowhere near the shadows in his eyes. “We’re doing very well,” he says, and he turns back to the food to reach for another helping of rice. “Nanami got engaged nearly six months ago. They’ve been doing some wedding planning; she says she wants to wait for the autumn before they have the ceremony, so there’s some time.”

“Oh,” Kyouichi says. Touga turns to hand his plate back to him and he takes it without thinking. “That’s good.”

“It is.” Touga lifts his own plate and leans in to serve himself another helping. “It’s been good for her. And of course it’s wonderful to see her happy.”

“Yeah.” Kyouichi takes another bite of food to stall for time while he reaches for something else to say. “How long have they known each other?”

Touga’s happy to answer that, at length enough that Kyouichi has plenty of time to find his next leading question. By the time they’re finishing the last of the meal Nanami brought in Touga is speaking without any prompting at all to recount the story of the last years of his sister’s romantic prospects; all Kyouichi has to do is lean back against the pillows at the end of the bed and let the sound of Touga’s voice wash over him like a wave.

Touga doesn’t ask about Kyouichi’s life any more than he says a word about his own.


	3. Inebriate

Touga keeps up a running conversation through the whole of dinner, a fact for which Kyouichi can’t help but be grateful. The other’s voice fills the room with sound enough to push back the ghosts of the past and to occupy Kyouichi’s own thoughts from the darker paths he is wont to travel in silence, and Touga never asks for Kyouichi to offer input of his own into the conversation. Kyouichi can duck his head over his plate and work steadily through the meal before him without need for any more than nods or vague, unformed hums of response; he doesn’t have to decide what to say to attempt to hold Touga’s own interest, doesn’t have to decide whether he’s more grateful to or irritated by the other’s company. He just stays quiet and lets Touga’s voice wash over him during the whole of the meal, and then well after it, when there’s nothing before them but empty dishes atop the tray Nanami brought in. He doesn’t look at Touga, doesn’t tip his head to see if Touga is looking at him or to answer the eye contact if he is; but Touga doesn’t seem to require any more audience than Kyouichi’s presence. He reclines back against the pillows at the end of the bed, languid with the grace he has always borne in every line of his body, and he goes on speaking while the sun outside slips to oranges and reds the color of Touga’s hair before fading to the dark of full night. Kyouichi stays quiet, sitting on the far edge of the bed with his shoulders angled half away but his body unmoving, and he listens to the sound of Touga’s voice filling the room until the other’s words finally stutter, and stop, and fade off into the silence of the walls surrounding them.

Everything is very still for a long moment. Kyouichi’s shoulders have tensed with Touga’s sudden silence; he can feel self-consciousness bearing down upon him with as much force as if it had never left, or perhaps as if it were simply holding itself back and saving its strength during the whole of Touga’s easy speech. Kyouichi feels himself in a spotlight, now, as the expectation of Touga’s silence clings to his tongue and sweeps down his throat as if to choke him. He has nothing to say, nothing to offer in exchange for the other’s last hour of conversation, and when he finally does speak it’s haltingly, with the words tearing free of his lips as if they’re being forced from him at swordpoint more than falling with the easy grace that Touga has always borne.

“It’s getting late.” Touga stirs at the other side of the bed, his weight shifting as he moves; Kyouichi turns away deliberately, tipping his head so he can hide his expression behind the fall of his hair as much as within the shadows of the room. “And we finished eating a while ago.”

Touga hums a soft noise in the back of his throat. “You’re right.” There’s a slide of fabric across the sheets as he moves, the mattress shifting slightly under them; when Kyouichi glances sideways through his hair he can see Touga in silhouette as he moves to collect the dishes. Kyouichi only watches for a moment; then he ducks his head forward and leans in to help, keeping his focus on the plates and utensils rather than up to look at Touga or to see if Touga is looking at him. Everything fits back on the tray somewhat better than when it came in, with the plates and bowls stacked one atop the other, and Touga reaches out to draw it in towards himself as he gets to his feet without waiting for Kyouichi’s suggestion.

“It’s gotten dark in here,” he observes. Kyouichi can see his head turn towards the window, can see the shift of long hair sweeping in a wave as he looks towards the shadows outside. “I hadn’t realized.”

“Yes,” Kyouichi says, breaking his intended silence before he can think through the relative wisdom of this decision. “The sun set the same way it always does.”

Touga laughs as if this is a joke instead of sharp-edged sarcasm. “It’s so easy to lose track of time with you,” he says, and that stifles any response Kyouichi could make to painful, aching silence on his tongue. Kyouichi stares up at Touga, trying to pick out details from the shadows of the other’s expression, but Touga doesn’t wait this time; he turns away after only a moment to move towards the door.

“Here,” he says as he approaches the door and shifts to brace the tray against one hip. There’s a pause, and a _click_ , and then the room is flooded with light at once from the fixture overhead. Kyouichi flinches from the bright, his night-adjusted eyes aching with the brilliance; by the time he’s cleared his vision Touga is bracing the door open with his foot and steadying his hold on the tray as he steps out into the hallway. “That should be a little more comfortable.” And then he’s gone, without any further commentary to clarify his meaning.

Kyouichi has no idea what to do. He’s still sitting on the bed, his eyes burning with the sudden bright; the loss of the shadows and the quiet feels almost like an attack, as if Touga had slapped him by flicking the lightswitch. And now Touga’s gone, vanished out into the hallway and presumably down the stairs, and Kyouichi has no idea if he intends to return or not. Was that intended as a goodbye? Did Touga turn on the light out of spiteful irony to force Kyouichi to get back up and turn it off before he collapses into the dreams that seem like they may make more sense than reality? Or will he be coming back with that smile at his lips, and those shadows in his eyes, and the spill of his voice to prickle against the length of Kyouichi’s spine like a half-forgotten touch? Kyouichi doesn’t know, he can’t decide; for the first few minutes he sits right where he is, frowning at the door and waiting for Touga to reappear. It’s only when the silence has stretched long enough that he’s started to feel self-conscious that he finally shifts to swing his legs over the edge of the bed.

It takes him some time to get to his feet without sending a shock wave of pain through the whole of his injured body. When he finally manages it he stays where he is for a moment, bracing himself with a hand against the bedframe and breathing deep in what feels like nothing so much as relief. It’s easier from there to come forward over the distance of the room, especially if he lets himself grimace in undisguised pain with each step, and he’s just reaching for the lightswitch when the door comes open for Touga once more.

“Saionji,” Touga says, sounding far less surprised by the other’s presence than Kyouichi feels by Touga’s. “What are you doing?” Kyouichi snatches his hand back from the switch, feeling himself color with entirely irrational embarrassment, but Touga is turning to look already. His mouth curves on a smile, the shape of it familiar and distant at once, and Kyouichi’s chest knots with bitter irritation he makes no attempt at all to fight back before he lets words spill over his tongue.

“I thought we were done for the night.” Touga looks back to meet his gaze, his eyes as unreadable as his smile is fixed. Kyouichi frowns harder and wills himself not to blush, or at least to drag the heat at his cheeks towards anger instead of self-consciousness. “I’m tired, I want to go to bed.”

“Of course,” Touga says, his voice as smooth as his smile. “I can’t let you sleep without a nightcap to see you off.” He lifts his hand from his side to hold out the pair of glasses he has caught in elegant fingers; Kyouichi’s gaze drops to follow the movement in spite of himself, to track the flex of Touga’s hand where he’s bracing the familiar curves. Touga stays where he is, holding the glasses out in midair between them, and finally Kyouichi huffs a breath and reaches to take one. It’s a sign of spite to accept just one and not the pair, but Touga doesn’t seem to notice; he’s twisting the other in his hand at once to cradle the bowl of the glass against his palm, as easily as if he had always intended to do so. He steps forward past the door and leaves it to fall shut behind him as he lifts the bottle of wine from his far side in a clear offer. “You don’t mind red, do you?”

Kyouichi huffs a sigh through his nose. It tastes like resignation on his tongue. “No.”

“Excellent,” Touga purrs, and he brings his hand wide to gesture towards the room behind Kyouichi. “Go ahead and sit down, I’ll be right over.”

Kyouichi turns to obey. This isn’t the role he wants to fall into -- following Touga’s lead didn’t appeal to him much in high school, and the petulant rebellion he adopted to overthrow that same is hardly a more appealing prospect. But he already took the glass from the other’s hand, already is complicit in the narrative Touga is writing for them; and he’s exhausted, all his resistance worn down or used up until he can’t muster anything but relief at the excuse to sit down. He does move away from the bed -- he doesn’t know how much longer he can go on feeling the suggestion of that setting with Touga so near to him -- and that just leaves the pair of armchairs set by the gable window at the far side of the room. Kyouichi remembers climbing into the too-high seats as a child, remembers struggling to gain traction against the slick surface when his feet were dangling shy of the ground; now lowering himself to the cushion is simple enough that he can do it even injured and with one hand bracing himself against the arm. He takes the seat carefully, settling himself gently in consideration of his bandaged hurts, and no sooner has he set his empty glass down against the table before him than the illumination of the light overhead goes dark. Kyouichi is left in moonlight, with nothing but the pale glow of the night sky on the far side of the windows to cast itself over his skin; and then there’s a hiss of friction, a faint tang of sulfur, and when Kyouichi turns his head Touga is holding a lit match to the fresh wick of a trio of candles set into a frame alongside the door.

“It’ll be a bit easier on our eyes like this,” Touga says, speaking without turning around as if sensing Kyouichi’s gaze on him. Kyouichi doesn’t answer; he just stays where he is, still and silent as he watches Touga touch the match to the second and then the third candle in turn. The third resists the flame; the match burns down nearly to Touga’s fingertips before the wick finally gives way. Touga tosses the match into the tray next to the candles without bothering to shake it out; there’s a flicker of fire against the metal before it dies to ash. Touga doesn’t wait to watch it; he’s collecting his own wineglass, and the bottle of wine, and turning away from the candles to pad across the floor to where Kyouichi is sitting by the window.

Kyouichi keeps watching Touga as the other approaches. It would be pleasant to turn aside, to convince himself that he doesn’t want to look, that his attention isn’t trailing the flicker of candlelight against the crimson fall of the other’s hair, but he can’t convince even himself of the fact of that, and with the drag of exhaustion sapping strength from his body all he can do is tip back into his chair and let the support of the cushions behind him take his weight as he watches Touga pour a smooth curve of dark liquid into first Kyouichi’s glass and then his own. The bottle is set aside at the far side of the table, at the edge where it doesn’t interrupt their line of sight to each other, and then Touga is leaning forward to close his fingers against the stem of Kyouichi’s glass and hold it out for the other’s claiming. Kyouichi hesitates for a moment, toying with the idea of refusing outright out of some childish petulance; but the chair is more comfortable than he expected, and the light is softer, and the thought of picking a fight seems tiring even to think of. He reaches out instead to lift his fingers from the arm of the chair and accept the curve of the glass from Touga’s bracing hold, and Touga draws his hand back to angle out the shape of his own cup towards Kyouichi’s in offer.

“To friendship,” he suggests.

Kyouichi considers the shine of Touga’s glass caught halfway between the moonlight and the candleflame. His fingers tighten at the curve of his cup, his arm flexes with a shudder of tension. “Old or new?”

Touga’s smile lures shadows to the corner of his mouth. “Both, I hope.”

Kyouichi looks to Touga’s face: the fall of his hair, the dark of his lashes, the curve of his lips. His shoulders tighten, echoing back the same strain in his fingers against his glass; and then they sag, giving up their strength as immediately as Kyouichi lets the breath he was holding go. He raises his glass, tipping forward to offer it into the space between himself and Touga, and when Touga moves it’s to bridge the last inch and touch them together with a chime of contact.

They’re quiet, for the first of it. Kyouichi slumps back into his chair with the toast once won from him; the wine is good enough to merit savoring it, to linger over each sip until the dark weight has escaped his grasp and left him wanting another. Touga starts off with more certainty, with a long swallow that Kyouichi can see work in the line of his throat, and he continues at a far greater pace, as if he intends to hold Kyouichi’s attention with just the flex of his fingers at his glass and the flourish of his motion as he pours a dark curve of wine from the bottle. Kyouichi doesn’t hold his glass out for more, and Touga doesn’t offer beyond a flicker of his eyes to gauge the surface of the liquid still lingering at the widest part of the other’s cup, but there’s still no discomfort between them, none of the self-conscious strain that Kyouichi half-expected there to be. They’re just coexisting, Kyouichi’s silence and Touga’s smile spreading out as if to fill the gap of years and space left between them, until Kyouichi thinks they might as well be sitting shoulder-to-shoulder for how close they feel.

“It’s good to have you here.” Touga’s words come easy, as if utterly unburdened by the weight of the silence that has formed around them, or perhaps it’s the effect of his first glass of wine that so eases his tongue and softens his words. They certainly are gentle and far warmer than Kyouichi was prepared for; it’s enough to pull his attention around to linger on the shadows of Touga’s face and track the play of light across the other’s features. Touga is looking into his glass, smiling soft as he twists the stem in his fingers to splash the liquid within into waves of shadow; Kyouichi’s attention follows Touga’s without his intention, flickering down to the other’s wine as if he’ll be able to see the nostalgic childhood the other has apparently glimpsed within its depths. “It was a pleasant coincidence to run into you today.”

“We do work in the same circles,” Kyouichi says, but if the wine has eased Touga’s smile it’s sapped his own edge too, and the words sound an objective statement instead of holding the knife-edge bite he intends. He can’t find that sharpness in himself, either; the hard shell of his resistance seems to have melted to the heat of the alcohol in his throat, until he finds himself almost grateful to the softness of the shadows around him instead of suspicious of them. “It was inevitable that we’d see each other again someday.”

Touga’s laugh is soft. “As if we were bound together by fate,” he says, and lifts his glass to his lips for another swallow. Kyouichi’s gaze flickers to the spill of red in the other’s hair as Touga moves, his attention slipping idly over the fall of it as if he’s reaching out to touch it, but he keeps his hands at the arms of his chair, keeps his shoulders pressed to the support behind him like he’s locked in place. Touga lowers his glass from his lips and tips back in his own chair, still bracing his cup to elegance between his fingers; when he turns his head it’s to look out at the garden on the far side of the window, where the moonlight is casting the world to starlit pale. “Did you ever think you’d be back here after graduation?”

Kyouichi doesn’t have to think about his answer. “No.”

Touga’s mouth pulls on a smile. He doesn’t look back to Kyouichi. “You were ready to turn your back on the past and leave everything behind you?”

Kyouichi shrugs uncomfortably. “Isn’t that what growing up is all about?” He watches Touga for another moment, his focus held as steady as if he’s a child once more, as if Touga is still the unreachable ideal he used to seem, back then; and then he turns away to look out at the garden, to stare unseeing at the blue-black shadows outside while he tries, again, always, to even out the space between them. It’s a futile effort, however many years he strives at it: however much Kyouichi drags at his memories of Touga his own self-estimation slides lower to match, as if to hold that gap between them as steady as a law of the universe. Touga has always been unreachable, has always been brighter, better, more beautiful that Kyouichi can ever see in himself; and then Touga takes a breath, and speaks.

“I’m glad to have you here.”

The words are simple, straightforward, unmistakeable in their meaning; they go through Kyouichi like an earthquake, as if to upend everything he has ever believed. His head turns, his eyes go wide; and Touga is watching him, gazing at Kyouichi himself with his lips still clinging to that curve and his eyes still moonlight-soft. He looks rapt, as if of all the things to look at in their surroundings he can hope for no more than to gaze at Kyouichi across from him, scowling into his cup of dark wine; and Kyouichi feels his whole body go hot, feels his stomach drop into such a freefall of adrenaline as if Touga truly has upended his sense of gravity. He has to struggle for a breath, has to pull air into his chest by force, and when he looks down into his glass it’s more to save himself from the weight of Touga’s gaze than anything else.

“It’s weird to be back,” Kyouichi says, as the closest thing he can manage to a sympathetic response without bridging the line into outright insincerity. “It makes me feel like I’m a kid again to be back here.”

“Yes,” Touga says, his voice warm like Kyouichi’s uncertainty is an offer of open nostalgia. “Like when we were young and played out in the garden together. You always did lose your patience with me when we sparred.”

“You always won,” Kyouichi says, looking up from his glass before he can think better of it. “Of course _you_ had more fun beating me up.”

“Come now,” Touga laughs. “You held your own well enough. The fun of it was in the sparring itself, before either of us won. And you scored a few hits of your own, I recall.”

“ _I_ don’t,” Kyouichi says, but his mouth is curving in spite of himself, urged towards happiness by the unabashed warmth in Touga’s voice.

“I suppose you wouldn’t,” Touga says. “You always were too hard on yourself. Even in high school, you spent more time worrying about whether other people liked you than about having a good time yourself.”

Kyouichi snorts. “At least I wasn’t so caught up in my own presence to go power-mad with it.”

Even that doesn’t ruffle Touga’s smile; he just nods his head as if to a point well landed and lifts his glass in a mock toast. “True enough,” he allows as he takes another sip. “I’m glad I had you there with me during those years. I don’t know what would have become of me alone.”

Kyouichi wants to protest this. He was hardly a support to himself in high school, has barely figured out how to stand on his own now; the idea of being an aid to the radiant popularity of Kiryuu Touga is laughable even in the more sober maturity of retrospect. But Touga is still gazing at him with his lips curving on a smile and his eyes dark with sincerity, and in the end the best Kyouichi can manage is to duck his head and clear his throat as if to shake off the too-much intimacy of the moment. “You had more than me ready to help.”

“There was Nanami,” Touga agrees. “She would have done anything I asked of her. What kind of a big brother would that make me, though?” There’s a shift of movement, a play of shadow and light as Touga leans forward and reaches out to touch against Kyouichi’s knee. Kyouichi goes still, frozen in place like the weight of that contact has drawn him out of time, and Touga’s touch lingers for a moment, gentle and ghostly and impossible to ignore.

“I always relied on you,” Touga says, as softly as if the words are a confession. Kyouichi glances sideways at him but Touga’s looking at his hand, his smile turned on the line of his fingers pressing just against Kyouichi’s leg. His thumb slides down, his grip tightens to squeeze a moment of pressure against the other. “You have always been the best of friends to me, Saionji.”

Kyouichi can’t look away. Touga’s hair is falling smoothly over his shoulder, casting a curtain between his features and the weight of the candlelight; his skin looks more pale by the illumination, as if he’s once more returning to the doll he sometimes seemed to be in their youth, beautiful and perfect and untouchable. But he _is_ touching Kyouichi, his hand is weighting against the other’s knee as if he’s trying to imprint his touch against Kyouichi’s skin; and then his lashes shift, his eyes comes up, and his gaze catches and holds Kyouichi’s own. There’s no time for Kyouichi to look away, no chance for him to pull back; he’s just caught at once, locked in place by the dark of those eyes deep and vivid as the wine curling against the curve of his wineglass.

They’re both very still for a moment. The candles are flickering on the far side of the room, the moonlight is shining in the reflection of the wine; everything feels strange and hazy, as if Kyouichi has drunk down as much of the wine between them as Touga, as if his grasp on the present and the past is blurring into a single space. He might be a child again, lingering in the comfortable appreciation of an affectionate touch, of companionship as innocent as it was trusting; he might be the teenager he was, once, all awkward elbows and harsh words stifled by the crush of harsh lips and biting teeth. Maybe he’s even himself now, bruised and scarred by the hurts of the past, matching his wounds to the skin Touga keeps covered in his fine suits and polished appearance; but there’s no restraint in the way Touga is looking at him now, and Kyouichi can see the outline of pain in the dark of the other’s eyes. It’s Touga’s glass that is trembling, that is forming a storm amid the ripples caught within it; and it’s Touga who reaches out to set it aside, to relinquish the stability of his grip for the freedom of his touch. He turns his head to watch as he reaches to steady his glass at the table, to lay it out of the path of danger as carefully as if following the steps of a dance; Kyouichi surrenders his own when Touga’s fingers reach for it to cup the bowl of the glass and slide it up and free of his hold. It’s all deliberate, as if they’re treading the paths back towards adolescence again by the lead of Touga’s fingers against Kyouichi’s knee, and Kyouichi’s not reaching out but he’s not pulling away either. He lets his hand go slack against the arm of the chair beneath him, lets himself relax back against the support at his shoulders; and then Touga is setting his glass aside, so near the other that the widest point of the cups kiss against each other, and when he turns back to Kyouichi it’s with his mouth curving on a smile as he reaches out to settle his other hand atop Kyouichi’s untouched knee.

Kyouichi doesn’t resist when Touga’s hands urge his legs apart to span the edge of his chair. It’s not an uncomfortable angle, in any case, and there’s something certain in Touga’s touch, a casual dominance that echoes back over the years of their relationship to pull at some desperate desire for acceptance that Kyouichi remembers as bruised fingers and an aching heart. There was a time he would have done anything for Touga’s friendship, for Touga’s attention; and here Touga is again, moving forward to tip forward onto his knees before Kyouichi’s chair like the space between them is the path of the years back to those early days. His hips come forward to fit into the space he’s made between Kyouichi’s knees, his hand slides up from the other’s leg, and when he reaches out Kyouichi’s lashes dip of their own accord, surrendering what sight he has available in the dim illumination for the touch of Touga’s fingers stroking through his hair. It’s just that contact at first, just the press of elegant fingers winding through the ever-tangled curls and waves of his hair to smooth it back from his face, like easing the vines of some overgrown garden back to reveal a long-hidden path; then Touga huffs a breath like a laugh, and Kyouichi can feel the heat of it spilling over his parted lips.

“Do you ever think about this?” Touga asks. The words are a whisper, so soft Kyouichi can barely catch them; they feel like a secret breathed into the shared spare of their childhood. “The way we used to practice with each other?” His fingers push farther back into Kyouichi’s hair; the heat of them curls in and against the back of the other’s neck. “Do you remember?”

 _Always_ , Kyouichi wants to say; but Touga’s arm is flexing to urge him forward, and Kyouichi’s head is tilting up in unthought surrender, and Touga’s mouth is pressing close against his own without waiting for the coherency of a response. Whatever Kyouichi might have said fades into a sound far in the back of his throat, weak enough to sound nearly pained, and Touga doesn’t pull away for it. He’s turning his head, fitting their mouths together with the easy grace of experience, and Kyouichi remembers this, as he remembers all of it, the shape of this mouth and the taste of these lips and the strength of those fingers winding into the weight of his hair. Touga’s hand guides him in, and Touga’s mouth presses close against his, and for a moment it’s that simple, that easy, warmth that is a satisfaction in itself, that is comfort and pleasure and companionship all together. Kyouichi can almost believe the lie of Touga’s mouth, can feel his hard-won resistance giving way like sand before the tide; and then Touga draws back for a moment to drag a breath free from Kyouichi’s lips, and Kyouichi can feel the shift from warmth to heat even before Touga comes back in for more.

Touga doesn’t hesitate at all. It’s been years since they so much as spoke, longer still since the last tentative press of lips to skin, but nostalgia is heavy in the air around them and Touga moves as if they are returned to high school, when he held the keys to all the fire in Kyouichi’s veins against the heat of his tongue. He’s as dexterous with that now as ever, as his hand at Kyouichi’s knee tightens and he leans in closer against the other’s position; Kyouichi is left caught between the back of his chair and the force of Touga in front of him, pinned down by the demand of Touga’s mouth on his. He could push the other off, surely, if he lifted his hands and splayed them against the span of Touga’s chest; but his hands stay slack, stripped of motion by the heat coursing through him, and when Touga licks in against his mouth Kyouichi parts his lips and kisses back, giving himself up with the instinctive grace of habit. There’s wine caught between them, heavy against Kyouichi’s lips and dizzy-sweet on Touga’s tongue, and for a moment that’s enough to steal Kyouichi’s thoughts, to pull him free from himself and into the illusion of Touga’s home, and Touga’s words, and Touga’s nostalgia. He’s leaning in for more, the years are melting away to nothing; and then Touga groans against his mouth, and lets Kyouichi’s hair go to reach for his shirt instead. His fingers fumble against the buttons down the front, dragging them free with impatient want; and memory hits Kyouichi like a blow. He can remember Touga’s hands on him like this, stripping his clothes away to bare his skin like a present, like an offering: and there were eyes, then, laughing pleasure from behind the lens of a camera, from behind a flash to pin the intimacy between them to obscenity. Kyouichi jerks back, wrenching free of Touga’s mouth like he’s pulling himself to air from the darkness of an ocean, and when he lifts a hand it’s to catch at the shift of Touga’s wrist at his shirt, to stop the motion half-formed. “Wait.”

Touga huffs a breathless exhale. “What?” he says, the word as much incredulity as a question. “I thought you remembered.” He leans in closer, his hand tightening at Kyouichi’s leg, his hair falling forward to brush and weight at Kyouichi’s shoulder. When he smiles his teeth flash white in the moonlight. “Some part of you does, anyway.” He slides his hand free of Kyouichi’s hold to reach down instead; his fingers fall with unerring precision to trail between the other’s open legs, his palm weights to grind down against the heat of the other’s arousal. “I’m sure I can find a way to remind you.”

“I remember,” Kyouichi says, and his voice does too, it’s a weapon on his tongue, the only thing he has ever had to offer as defense against the pliant allure Touga wields so effortlessly. He presses his lips together and swallows hard, struggling for coherency against the ache of heat surging desire against Touga’s palm. He could shut his mouth, could duck his head and give up and give in and let Touga draw him back to a rose-tinted past, to the illusion of gold where there was never any more than flaking gilt. But Kyouichi has never been able to convince himself of his own lies, has always been burdened by the weight of brutal honesty, and he’s lost too much to the bruise of truth to turn his back on it now. So he opens his eyes, and he meets Touga’s gaze, and he takes a breath of air enough to chase away the lull of wine from his tongue.

“I’ve always wondered,” he hears himself say. “When did you first let Akio fuck you?”

Kyouichi can see the wall come down in front of Touga’s face. It’s in the depth that flickers out of his eyes, in the collapse of his smile into flat neutrality; it’s in the angle of his shoulders, and the tilt of his chin. His fingers at Kyouichi’s knee and hips go slack, as if Kyouichi has forcibly stripped strength from them, as if they’re just resting there for lack of anywhere better to go. They stare at each other for a moment, Touga’s expression unreadable like a reflection skating across a dark pool and Kyouichi with his jaw set against the tremor of emotion in him; and then Touga rocks back onto his heels, his hands falling away from Kyouichi as he moves.

“You must be tired,” he says, and his voice is as polished-smooth as his eyes, stripped of any of the human texture that would make him more than a doll. “It’s been thoughtless of me to keep you up reminiscing.” He gets to his feet at once, a single elegant movement; Kyouichi doesn’t lift his head to look up at Touga standing over him. His throat is tight, his eyes are burning; he doesn’t want Touga to see the emotion that he has never been able to keep from painting itself to clarity across the whole of his face. There’s a pause, a moment as if of hesitation; and then Touga moves to pick up the near-empty bottle in one hand, and his glass in the other, and Kyouichi ducks his head to stare at his knees as Touga turns to move towards the door.

He keeps his head down as the other moves away, not looking up even at the sound of the door opening; even when there’s a too-long pause before it shuts, Kyouichi keeps his eyes fixed on the shadow at the floor. Finally there’s the shift of the door moving over the carpet, and the _click_ of the latch settling back into place; and Kyouichi squeezes his eyes shut, and breathes deep, and tries to ignore the tang of wine and the ache of tears clinging to the back of his throat.


	4. Illumination

Kyouichi can’t sleep that night.

He would like to blame his injuries. It would be an easy escape from reality, a nearly-plausible excuse enough for any but the most skeptical audience to believe. But he is trapped in the space of his own mind, and he can see what memories are flickering against the shadows of his closed eyes, and he knows too well and too clearly what it is that is stealing his rest. The bed is comfortable, the sheets soft and the mattress forgiving; he shed his rumpled shirt with Touga’s departure, and with just the pressure of the bandages against him he has more than enough physical comfort even with the ongoing ache of pain. But when he closes his eyes he can see the flash of a too-sharp smile, when he breathes he can hear the catch of laughter in a darkness-heavy voice, and when he shifts at the bed his memory invents an audience, invents visitors he knows he doesn’t have. The sheets are clean, they smell of detergent and dust; but Kyouichi’s mind invents a murmur of cologne, a musky, heavy scent that shudders horror down his spine just in the memory of it. He can imagine Touga where he is now, stripped to that moonlight-pale skin and with his hair spreading out around him like a overturned glass of wine, his head tipped back and his throat tight on a groan as tan hands smooth up the inside of his thighs, as a smile flickers at smirking lips, as -- and Kyouichi pushes himself upright in a rush, hissing as much to shove aside the memory-nightmare as at the pain that rushes through him.

He can’t stay here. There’s too much in this room, too many ghosts and too many memories true and invented alike; the air feels cloying like perfume, as if the too-much scent of roses has collapsed in on itself and turned to rot. The window opens a few inches, when Kyouichi tries it; but it’s not enough, he can’t catch his breath, and in the end he only gasps a few lungfuls of cool air before he turns to stumble across the room and make his way for the freedom of the hallway. His shirt is on the floor, crumpled around the stain of blood turning dark at the fabric; Kyouichi leaves it rather than trying to bend over to pull it back around his shoulders. It’s easier to reach into the closet for one of the heavy dressing gowns hanging there; he pulls the soft of the robe around his shoulders and hunches in reflexive resistance to the silken slick of it before he comes forward to drag the door open and leave it ajar in his wake while he makes his way down the hall and towards the open air.

The stairs are a challenge. Kyouichi’s wound is aching again with an hour’s distance from the glass of wine he drank; he has to lean hard on the railing, and even then it takes two stops on the way down to catch his breath just to make sure he won’t topple down the stairs and win himself another round of injuries to mottle his skin. But he’s determined, now, he has his jaw set and his shoulders tense, and he does make it to the bottom eventually, thanks to a white-knuckled grip on the railing at his side. It’s easier from there, a relatively simple task to traverse the nighttime shadows of the echoing mansion around him and to the door leading out into that elegant garden; Kyouichi’s breathing is easing by the time he pulls the door open and steps out into the cool relief of the night air.

It _is_ cold. The rise of the moon has brought a chill with it; Kyouichi is glad for the weight of the robe around his shoulders now. He pulls it tighter around himself and loops the sash into a loose knot to hold the drifting fabric near to his skin so he can let his hold go as he moves out into the smooth paths traversing the garden. The footing is easy, the stones underfoot smoothed to such evenness that Kyouichi doesn’t have to fumble for his balance even with his movement made awkward around the effect of the injury throbbing dull hurt against him; he can walk without thinking about the direction of his steps, can clear his mind of any but the most casual awareness of his surroundings. It feels better to be outside, to have the cool bright of the night air filling his lungs instead of the shadows of the past filling his head; and then he turns the corner of the house, and steps out into the space of his own moonshadow, and when he lifts his head Touga is standing there before him.

Touga hasn’t turned to see him. He’s in the middle of the space, distant from the side of the building that Kyouichi has been hovering near to as he moves; there’s no shadow against the coat covering his shoulders, nothing to stop the wind from feathering its touch through the heavy fall of his hair. His head is lifted, his gaze turned up towards the sky overhead; but Kyouichi has no doubt at all that Touga knows he’s here, that his arrival is no surprise to the other. It feels a little like Touga’s been waiting for him, as if he stepped out into the garden to make a picture of himself for the audience that Kyouichi would ultimately become.

There was a time when Kyouichi would have found this thought unsettling, when the implication of his own predictability would have set his jaw and hunched his shoulders against the effect of Touga’s manipulation. But he was younger, then, and he’s tired now, and the implied intention of Touga’s position feels less like manipulation and more like a compliment, as if Kyouichi is only just seeing the implied attention to his own behavior that Touga’s action carries. There’s a thoughtfulness to it, a care that Kyouichi feels now as if he’s only just become able to see it, and when he steps forward off the path towards Touga it’s in answer to that more than anything else.

Touga doesn’t speak as Kyouichi draws closer. He doesn’t turn his head, doesn’t look away from his consideration of the sky overhead as Kyouichi draws right up next to him, so near he could reach out and touch Touga’s wrist with the tips of his fingers without having to stretch for it at all. He doesn’t. He leaves the space between them sacred, keeps the borders between himself and Touga as clear as the pale light of the moon can make them, and when he lifts his head it’s to look up instead of at Touga, to turn his gaze in the direction of the other’s rather than to linger at Touga’s features directly.

“Full moon tonight,” Kyouichi says, by way of the greeting Touga isn’t waiting for and he doesn’t have to offer.

Touga hums a soft sound in the back of his throat. “Nearly,” he agrees. “It’s a day or two short of it but it’s hard to tell when it’s this bright.”

Silence falls again. The moon is brilliant, as Touga said; Kyouichi feels as if it should hurt his eyes, as if he should be squinting against the light it’s reflecting back towards him. The sky seems to glow between the effect of the moonlight and the glimmer of the stars studding the darkness overhead; Kyouichi can’t imagine how anyone could think to sleep with the night as bright as it is now. He goes on gazing for a long moment, feeling the quiet spread and smooth like fading ripples across a still pool; and then he turns his head, and he sees the way Touga is looking at him.

There’s no strain in Touga’s face, no effort in the dark of his eyes. The moonlight is pouring down across his hair to whiten the color of it to silver, to cast the pale of his skin to ivory, but he’s not looking to the source of that glow that is treating his features with such tender consideration. He’s gazing at Kyouichi next to him, his eyes soft under the weight of his lashes, his lips relaxed to ease that looks nearly a frown, and Kyouichi’s whole body prickles as if with electricity, as if Touga’s gaze is a spotlight hot enough to burn self-consciousness to every inch of his skin. Touga’s attention presses against him, a weight akin to the objective clarity of that long-ago camera in Akio’s wandering fingers: but his gaze stays at Kyouichi’s face, his focus lingering at the other’s features rather than slipping down to the angle of his hip or the deep neckline of the robe tied around him. Kyouichi’s heart is beating faster, his face is going warm like the heat is being drawn from him directly, and he can no more look away than he could force himself into sleep.

Touga shifts next to him. It’s not a movement of his feet: it’s in the tilt of his shoulders, in the duck of his head, the action telegraphed by the pull of his hair rippling with even the tiniest of motions. His hand lifts, his fingers reach as if to touch at Kyouichi’s wrist, as if to thread into the curling ends of Kyouichi’s hair, and Kyouichi knows with everything in him that he will not say no to this, that if Touga’s fingers press against his skin it will be his motion that tips forward, that capitulates to the suggestion of that touch. He can find no resistance, with the moonlight silvering Touga’s hair and the tender inventions of a shared childhood ghosting around them; those bruises ache too deep, they linger too close to the bone for him to resist the comfort of a gentle touch soothing across injured skin.

Kyouichi doesn’t move, doesn’t take a breath and doesn’t shift his hand; but Touga goes still all the same, stalled to inaction as if by the sound of words in the space between them. They’re both silent for a moment, Kyouichi waiting and Touga hesitating; and then Touga’s gaze drops, his attention catches behind the shutter of his lashes, and Kyouichi’s breath gusts into resignation as Touga rocks back to draw his hand in towards his chest.

“I should get to bed,” he says. His fingers curl in against his palm to form a cage around the offer of his touch; when he ducks his head it’s without lifting his gaze to meet Kyouichi’s. “I’ll see you at breakfast, I hope.”

It’s almost a statement, nearly the self-assured certainty it would have been, once, at the lips of the student council president. Maybe it’s just Kyouichi’s imagination that invents the flicker of height at the end of the words, that draws an order towards the uncertainty of a question. It doesn’t matter. With the moonlight easing the painful color from all his injuries, he can find a gentleness for his tongue from the man he is instead of the boy he once was.

“Yes,” he says, and it’s his turn to duck his head, to give Touga the consideration of privacy rather than looking up to pin down the weight of the other’s gaze into the harsh of reality. “Goodnight.”

Touga doesn’t linger. He turns as soon as Kyouichi speaks, moving quickly enough that his hair sweeps around him like a cloak, and by the time Kyouichi is looking sideways at him again Touga is well out of reach and with both his hands safely back in his pockets. Kyouichi stays where he is, still and silent as he watches Touga move away and around the corner of the building, and then he lifts his head to turn his gaze back to the glow of the moon overhead.

It might not be as bright as a full moon, but Kyouichi can’t tell the difference.


	5. Rehabilitation

It takes time for Kyouichi to heal.

He knows that it will. His injuries are far from life-threatening but they’re not comfortable either; it’s half the reason he submitted to Touga’s insistence on taking him here in the first place. He doesn’t want to be trapped in a hospital when he doesn’t need that level of care, but looking after himself alone would be exhausting if he could manage it at all. Better to submit once, he decided, than to insist on his own strength and find himself in need of assistance later on. He would have turned to someone else, he tells himself, if he had the option; but in the moment, with his blood running hot with adrenaline and Touga’s hands warm and steady against him to keep him on his feet, it had seemed reasonable to trust himself to the other’s care, however many years have elapsed since they last spoke.

Touga _does_ take good care of him. Nanami helps too, with occasional meals and more frequent tea, but she’s far less present that Kyouichi expected. He anticipated Touga to hand him over to become his sister’s problem, to be nursed back to health while Touga resumed the graceful thoughtlessness of his own day-to-day life; but Kyouichi can’t find any indication of Nanami helping with more than the few meals she makes when Touga has made apologies to step out for some particularly necessary call or business exchange. It’s Touga who eats nearly every meal with him, as if keeping Kyouichi company is as much a part of his nursing as the rest of it, and it’s always Touga who washes the slow-healing injuries and wraps them anew in the morning and the evening. Kyouichi makes a half-hearted protest the second time this happens, in the form of a biting suggestion that Touga must have more important things to do with his time; but Touga just laughs as if he’s joking, and goes on without anything further. Kyouichi can’t find the words to push for more, to insist that Touga resume the cool distance they have maintained between them since their farewell at graduation; so he submits, and he lets Touga care for him while he feels the awareness of unspoken intimacy wrapping around him like restraints.

Touga is always present. It’s not just at meals, not just during those strangely tender moments when he kneels before Kyouichi on the bed and touches him with a care better suited to lovemaking than nursing; he lays claim to the table by the window, the round one where they set their glasses of wine that first night, and he stays there for the long, bright hours of the morning and into the gold of the afternoon, making endless calls and taking notes for himself in handwriting as fluidly elegant as the incomprehensible murmur of his words. Kyouichi finds himself watching more than he should, from where he’s propped up on a heap of pillows in pursuit of some accomplishment with regards to his own work; even with the words too soft for him to hear, there’s something arresting in the dark of Touga’s voice, something that draws Kyouichi’s gaze to the other even just to see a pen slide over paper in a motion he’s seen hundreds of times before. He finds himself trapped in the angle of Touga’s fingers, pinned in place by the motion of the other’s hand as if it’s his own form caught in the other’s grip, and it’s only ever when Touga lifts his head and flickers a smile of too much knowing to bear that Kyouichi can wrench himself away to scowl at his own work instead of lingering on Touga doing his.

He does get some work done. It’s nothing like what he wishes he were doing: his injuries have stripped stamina from his body and left him shaky after just an hour or two of concerted effort; but it’s better than nothing, and with Touga hovering in the corner of the room Kyouichi is ready to grasp for any excuse to occupy himself with something other than the other’s presence. His work has accumulated on him in just the day it took him to return to something like activity: he has an array of messages to work through, first to listen to and then to sort by priority before he begins making calls to offer the polite excuses his choice of work demands. Those take a half day just in themselves, and the effort of sustained courtesy is enough to leave Kyouichi flat across the bed and drowsing by the time Nanami knocks on the door with a meal. Touga stays with him for that too, smiling and offering easy conversation in spite of Kyouichi’s near-silent attention to the meal before him, and when he leaves it’s with an understanding that he’ll return with the morning. Kyouichi is careful to be awake when Touga arrives, to keep himself from the relative vulnerability of unconsciousness so long as the other is in the room, but Touga is perfectly polite, calm and friendly without any trace of undue intimacy even when he’s replacing Kyouichi’s bandages. He doesn’t even look at the other, except when Kyouichi is caught in the indulgence first, and then it’s only to flicker a smile and turn back to his work as if it’s the most interesting thing in the world.

It’s more frustrating than Kyouichi expected it to be. He thought he had left these desires in the past, back when he resigned himself to never being more than a shadow in Touga’s summer-bright world; it’s to leave this behind that he absented himself from this life, from this relationship, that he took the excuse of graduation to break away from the tangled maze of history they had knit between them to lay fresh tracks of his own. But it all comes back as if it had never left, an injury that he bandaged but never left to heal, and working, living, _existing_ with Touga in the same space is enough to prickle self-consciousness down Kyouichi’s spine like the thorns of a rose vine creeping against the thin fabric of his borrowed shirt.

He tries not to think about it. It’s easier that way, if he doesn’t acknowledge the ache at the inside of his chest, if he doesn’t look too closely at the old, painful want rising from the grave of his childhood. That becomes more manageable, at least, even if nothing else does: every day that goes past grants him back some measure of strength that he can apply to his work, and the more he focuses on his work the less attention he has to spare for anything -- or more applicably anyone -- else. He can keep his head down, and keep his mind focused on the next call, the next negotiation, the next polite greeting, until it’s almost enough to convince himself he’s alone, until he’s all but managed the impossible and forgotten Touga’s in the room with him.

“Don’t you think you should take a break?”

The words are startling, like a touch against the back of Kyouichi’s neck when he had thought himself alone. He keeps from visibly jumping, he thinks, but the adrenaline that runs through him is still enough to tense in his shoulders and across his chest, and the pain of the force hisses a soundless gust of hurt past his lips. He stays still for a moment, jaw clenched tight while he fights back the burn of pained tears from his eyes; and then he lifts his gaze without raising his chin to glare at the cause of his sudden shock.

Touga’s not looking at the notes in front of him. He has his phone laid out atop the table and his fingers braced against the sides of it like he’s toying with the weight, but he’s slouched back into the chair behind him with one arm draping languid over the support. His head is resting at the back, his whole body is angled into perfect relaxation; he looks as if he’s been there for hours, as if he would be perfectly content to recline there for hours more. It makes Kyouichi feel his own discomfort the more keenly in comparison, even as it hunches his shoulders forward on irritation, and when he speaks his voice comes out weighted with the associated edge on the words.

“I _don’t_ think so,” he snaps. “I’ve already lost enough time as it is, I can hardly afford to take it easy now.”

“It’ll take you longer to recover this way,” Touga tells him, in a voice as level and calm as if he doesn’t hear the raw edge on Kyouichi’s words. “You’d be up and about faster if you spent your time resting instead of working.”

Kyouichi draws back against the pillows propped up behind him. “Am I imposing on you?” he asks. “If it’s such a burden to look after me I’ll go to a hospital instead. Or I can just go home, that way I won’t be troubling anyone but myself.”

“Saionji.” Touga has rocked forward in his chair, has tightened his hold on the arm beneath him; he’s given over his hold on his phone to lift his hand instead, to extend his fingers out towards Kyouichi sitting on the bed. The gesture is vaguely patronizing, as if Kyouichi is a skittish horse that needs to be soothed into calm, but it’s effective all the same; Kyouichi can feel his sharp-edged words slide to silence on his tongue, can feel the whip edge of his hurt feelings flicker and die to dark coals in the space of his chest. Touga keeps his hand up for a moment, keeps his gaze fixed unflinchingly on Kyouichi; there’s no laughter at his mouth, no repressed amusement at his eyes. “You’re not imposing.”

There’s a pause, like he’s waiting to see if his words have landed, or to see if Kyouichi is going to react. Kyouichi wonders distantly what Touga would do if he pushed himself to upright and swung his legs around to get out of bed himself. Maybe it would be enough to break that carefully constructed distance between them, maybe Touga would come forward to push him back to the sheets; the thought is amusing to picture, Touga trying to force Kyouichi back to his sickbed while Kyouichi shoves him off. It’s pointless to make the attempt in any case: even if Touga stays exactly where he is Kyouichi’s retreat to the door will be a hobble at best, and the last thing he wants is to collapse to the floor and prove Touga entirely correct. He huffs an exhale instead, sighing some measure of the pressure from his lungs as he turns his head to glare out the window instead.

At the chair Touga lets his hand drop, although he still doesn’t lean back. Kyouichi can hear the sigh of relief at the other’s lips, as if he’s grateful for Kyouichi’s obedience, but he’s speaking before the thought can coalesce to rebellious fire in Kyouichi’s mind. “We’re glad to have you here.”

Kyouichi snorts. “Yeah, I’m sure Nanami loves spending her evenings waiting on an old acquaintance from high school.”

Touga hums the soft outline of a laugh. “It’s not terrible for her,” he says. “I’ve told her she only needs to help when she wishes.”

Kyouichi looks sideways at Touga. He wants to ask, wants to press for more than that: _what about_ you _, why are you doing this_ , _why are you pretending to care?_ But Touga isn’t looking at him; his head is turned, his gaze is fixed out the window until the curve of the smile at his lips might be appreciation for the garden outside rather than related to Kyouichi at all. Kyouichi’s chest tightens, his jaw sets, and he has to look away again just to fight his voice back into stability enough to speak.

“I see,” he attempts. “You’re keeping me here to get the jump on my work contacts, is that it?” He tries on the outline of a laugh; it falls flat but he can’t give it more life. “I should have known you’d use any means to get a victory.”

“Mm,” Touga hums. He shifts at his chair; the movement of his rising pulls Kyouichi’s attention in spite of himself, but Touga’s not watching him. His eyes are on the table as he reaches to pick up his phone and tuck it into his pocket before he collects his notes. “Not quite.” He lifts his head to shake his hair back from his face; the motion is too fast for Kyouichi to duck away in time, but Touga just smiles to see him staring. “It’s hardly a win if I claim it while my opponent is at less than his best.” Kyouichi blinks, startled into silence by this claim, but Touga’s smile stays the same, not even widening with the amusement that he usually offers to catching Kyouichi off-guard. His attention drops from Kyouichi’s face to the fall of his shirt draping loose over the slow-healing injuries and he ducks his head in acknowledgment.

“It’s nearly time to replace those.” He turns to step away from the table and towards the bedroom door. “I’ll just put these away and then I’ll be back. Can you take a break from your work just yet?”

Kyouichi huffs a breath and frowns in answer to the glance Touga gives him from the door. “I’ve done enough,” he says. “It’s pointless to try to get anything else done once you’re finished for the day, anyway.”

Touga doesn’t even flinch at this jab; his smile seems rather to say that he’s pleased by Kyouichi’s compliance, as if he’s a child delighted by his friend’s availability to play. “Excellent,” he says, and he pulls the door open. “I’ll make us something for lunch as well, then.” He steps out into the hallway, still looking back to smile at Kyouichi on the bed. “Stay there, I’ll be right back.” And then he’s gone, slipping out of the door and into the hallway before Kyouichi has the chance to say anything at all, much less find the words to encompass what he might want to express. Kyouichi is left alone in the room, his face warm and his shoulders tense, and even when he tosses himself back against the pillows to gust an irritated sigh it doesn’t help as much as he wishes.

Even without anyone there to see, it’s hard to fight back the color staining his cheeks to crimson.


	6. Healed

Kyouichi is getting better.

He can feel it at the back of his head, an awareness too innate to his body to shake. He hardly looks at his injuries himself -- that’s become Touga’s exclusive responsibility, over the last several days of gentle touches and clean white bandages -- but he can feel the healing all the same, slow at first but gaining in speed as his body knits itself back together. The first night he slept through without interruption was the turning point; since then rest and care have conspired to mend open pain into a dull hurt, and then to pull that aside while Kyouichi lies still through the hours of the night. By now he doesn’t hurt at all so long as he’s sitting down, and he can move carefully around the room and even up and down the stairs without more than a shiver of not-quite pain; and he knows what that means with clarity enough that he doesn’t need to wait to be told.

That he does anyway is proof, he thinks, that some part of that naïve boy he was remains in him still.

It’s been coming for days. Touga is as careful with the bandages as ever, as gentle in his touch and as deliberate in washing across the pattern of Kyouichi’s hurts; but the white comes away clean, now, and there’s never any color tinging the bowls of water he takes away with him. Kyouichi could draw attention to this, has thought about commenting on wasted effort, on useless care; but every day passes without his speech, and every evening when Touga knocks before slipping through the door there’s warm anticipation in his expression that Kyouichi can’t find the heart to reject. He strips off his shirt without being told, and lets Touga press against him like he’s trying to memorize the shape of Kyouichi’s skin under his fingerprints, and he wonders how long it will be before Touga says anything.

Touga is slower than usual, tonight. He arrived later, when the sun was sliding over the horizon instead of standing well clear of it, and he’s quiet, moving in almost unbroken silence as he comes forward and kneels alongside the bed. Kyouichi turns without being told to swing his legs off the sheets and over the edge of the bed as he reaches to pull his shirt up and free of his head; he doesn’t have to slow the motion, doesn’t feel so much as a twinge of tender skin as he moves. His motion is easy, as graceful as he will ever manage to be, without any effect of the injury he took those days ago; he can feel the implications of his actions as if Touga is staring at him instead of looking down to wet a clean cloth in the bowl of water at his side. But Touga doesn’t comment, and doesn’t look up to meet Kyouichi’s eyes; he just reaches for the bandage wrapped around the other’s chest to unfasten the end and begin drawing it free of the pink-healed skin. He moves carefully to work the loose end free and wind the length around his hands with intent focus; Kyouichi watches the motion of the white in the slow-fading light, watches the flare of the sunset stain the bandage to gold and scarlet as if to grant it the illusion of long-gone injury. Touga wraps the bandage into neat loops and turns to set it aside; it’s only as he’s wringing the cloth out over the water that Kyouichi realizes that the bowl is the only thing Touga brought with him, that the usual neat roll of a fresh wrapping is entirely absent. His skin prickles with self-consciousness, his head lifts on understanding; and then Touga reaches out to press the cloth to his skin, and Kyouichi fixes his gaze out the window and lets himself linger in this last chance at closeness.

Touga is slower than he usually is. He’s always careful, always lingers over this contact like he might over a glass of favorite wine; tonight he moves like an artist, as if Kyouichi is a sculpture awaiting the few final touches of his artist’s fingers to bring him to life. The cloth presses against Kyouichi’s skin, mapping the line of sleek scar tissue that has mended over the ache of the healed injury; and then farther, trailing around the edges and out to where the hurt never touched, travelling farther than the pain of damaged nerves radiated even at the first. Kyouichi should protest, should speak to call out the indulgence of Touga’s touch and the unnecessary care of his attention; but the sunset is spreading fire over the sky, and he stays silent and watches the dying color glow in time with the bittersweet ache of Touga’s hands lingering against him.

Finally Touga draws away, just as the reds spilling over the sky are starting to shift towards blue, as purple is rising to draw the beauty of the sunset down towards the dark of the night. Kyouichi blinks and looks down, watching Touga through his lashes as the other returns the cloth to the bowl of water; Touga keeps his head down and keeps his hands at his knees for a moment before he sighs over a breath and speaks.

“That’s it,” he says. “You’re as good as new, now. Even the scar will fade eventually.” He lifts his head to meet Kyouichi’s sideways gaze with full attention. When he smiles it turns his face into the mask of a handsome stranger. “You can return home whenever you like. I know how anxious you’ve been to get back to work.”

Kyouichi’s jaw flexes to work over a flicker of tension. “Right,” he says, his voice catching and straining against the tractionless ease of Touga’s polite dismissal. Touga’s still watching him; Kyouichi bares his teeth in what passes for a smile. “So we can get back to fighting over art made by monsters, right?”

Touga’s lips go slack on the tension holding them to a smile. Kyouichi can see the mask of his expression crack, can watch it dissolve into dust as Touga’s face falls into the blank weight of surprise, as if Kyouichi has finally reached out to slip the impact of a point past the other’s defenses. They look at each other for a moment, Touga’s eyes wide and soft at the corners and Kyouichi through his lashes, under the defense of his hair; and then Touga ducks his head forward to hide his face in shadow as he reaches for the cloth soaking in the water before him. His fingers curl around it and tighten as if to pull it free of the surface; and then go slack, letting the weight go free to float in the water and wind around his fingers. There’s a moment of silence, quiet strange and taut with meaning Kyouichi doesn’t understand; and then Touga takes a breath at once and lifts his hand out of the water.

“I called off the deal with Rime,” he says. His head is still ducked down so Kyouichi can’t see his face as Touga shakes his hand dry and rubs against the hip of his pants; Touga doesn’t look up to see Kyouichi’s face, doesn’t raise his eyes to meet the disbelieving shock in the other’s. He just pushes to his feet, straightening with haste enough to be more awkward than otherwise as he lifts his hand to push his hair back behind one ear. The curtain of it swings against his shoulder, falling forward in spite of his efforts as he bends over to reach for the bowl of water at the floor; his fingers are just catching against the edge when Kyouichi finally lifts the slack weight of his hand from the bed at his side and out to grab at Touga’s wrist.

“Touga.” The word tears free from him without thought, without intention; there is no chance to soften it to gentleness, no opportunity for childish petulance to twist it to the curse adolescence made of it. The sound is just raw, aching from the distance of decades into a plea from the past, nostalgia seizing control to speak from some impulsive part of Kyouichi’s soul; and Touga stops, going utterly still under the weight of Kyouichi’s hand at his arm. He’s bent forward, his shoulders angled in as he reaches for the floor; his hair falls before his face, the red of the strands catching the fading light to shadow.

They’re both very still for a moment. Touga doesn’t straighten, doesn’t pull to his feet or drop to his knees; he just stays where he is, as if Kyouichi’s touch has frozen him to a statue, as if Kyouichi holds all the strength for them both at his fingertips. Kyouichi’s heart is racing, his breath is catching on speed in his chest; but his hold on Touga’s arm is unflinching, his grip as steady as anything he has ever known. He stares at Touga’s hair for a long span of heartbeats, gazing at the shadow of it like he’ll be able to see through if he only looks long enough; and then he presses his lips together to swallow, and he raises his other hand to touch against the weight of that shadow. It looks impenetrable, dark and solid as a wall; but it gives way like silk to his touch, Touga’s hair catching at his fingers and pulling back to reveal the other’s profile. Touga is looking straight ahead, his gaze fixed on the corner of the bed Kyouichi is sitting on; he doesn’t flinch away when Kyouichi pushes his hair over his shoulder, or when Kyouichi catches the last few locks to tuck them clumsily behind Touga’s ear. He just holds still, a statue of his own making, artistic enough to satisfy the most discerning eye; but Kyouichi’s chest is aching, and his hands are shaking, and it’s not art he wants.

“Touga,” he says again: soft, this, as gentle as Touga’s touch against his bare chest. Touga’s lashes dip, Touga’s lips part on a silent exhale, and Kyouichi lets his hand slide in and around to curl against the back of the other’s head. Touga tips in sideways, his whole body going slack with surrender to the urging of Kyouichi’s pull at his arm and touch at his hair, but Kyouichi is turning too, twisting where he’s set at the edge of the bed to meet the other. Touga’s hand drops to the far side of his hips to brace against the sheets, Touga’s knee lands at the edge of the bed alongside Kyouichi’s own, and Kyouichi is lifting his chin and drawing Touga in closer to him as his lashes dip with the weight of expectation.

The contact is gentle at the first. Touga’s lips are parted, his hair is feathering against Kyouichi’s palm; Kyouichi offers the give of his mouth without expectation, without intent. It’s just a kiss, just the press of lips to each other to share some fraction of heat between the two of them as if they’re children making their first tentative forays into romance again. Kyouichi can feel the tremble of Touga’s mouth under his, can feel the strain in their arms caught between their bodies; and then he lets his eyes shut, and lets his head tip, and when he lets Touga’s arm go it’s to reach up and out to wind his fingers into the other’s hair so he can pull Touga down against him. Touga huffs a sound against Kyouichi’s lips, his hand comes up to catch and brace against Kyouichi’s shoulder, and Kyouichi gathers Touga in against him and lets their joined weight bear them back down to the sheets.

His healed-over injury doesn’t so much as twinge at the movement.


	7. Ameliorate

It’s different, this time.

Kyouichi remembers this: from before, from memories, from fantasies, from dreams and nightmares alike. He has lived the fact of this dozens of times, hundreds, has worn the recollection of Touga’s body against his smoother than the moonlight-pale of the other’s skin, has memorized the dizzy whirl of reality down into single heartbeats of clarity: the catch of light on crimson hair, the sharp intake of a heat-struck breath, the bruise of fingerprints laid close over his hip. He has lived a thousand lives with the bare handful of memories he has of Touga, has reworked and reinvented every inch he recalls of the other’s body, and in the end he convinced himself he knew, he was certain that there could be no more secrets lurking behind the coy shadows of Touga’s eyes. Kyouichi knows Touga, knows Touga better than he knows himself: because knowledge comes at the price of mystique, and it’s the latter that hides the eroticism that Kyouichi knows himself so vulnerable to. There are no fantasies in life, no graceful secrets to the raw physicality of sex: Kyouichi has made his disappointment a part of himself until it patterns the beat of his heart and the clarity of his gaze, and he believed himself safe from seduction.

But Touga is not who he once was. Kyouichi remembers the past: the force of clumsy hands, the stick of clammy breathing, the ache and friction and heat hard-won at the cost of the fragile romance of childhood. He is expecting to find familiarity in Touga’s movement, in the shove of forceful hands demanding surrender, in the inelegant action of bodies working together in pursuit of their isolating pleasures; he is braced for it, is ready for it, tells himself it’s worth it even if it comes with the price of disappointment.

There is no force to Touga’s hands, this time, no certainty to his movements. He is hesitant now as he never was before, as if Kyouichi’s touch is that of a wholly unknown lover, as if he’s returned back to the virginal youth Kyouichi never knew him to be. He gives way when Kyouichi pulls at him, tipping in and down to the bed in answer to Kyouichi’s touch more than in pursuit of his own desires, and when he reaches out it’s to press his fingers to Kyouichi’s shoulder, to track the dip and shift of the other’s collarbone with uncertain attention or to brush his fingers against the weight of Kyouichi’s tied-back hair falling over his shoulder. There’s a care to it, an affection silent but clear all the same that catches Kyouichi’s breath in his chest and glows heat over his skin more certainly than a more aggressively wanting touch ever could. Touga’s fingertips tremble against his skin, hesitant as if they’re not sure of their welcome, and Kyouichi would like to soothe away the tension, would like to answer uncertainty with grace, anxiety with eloquence. But Touga has always been the one with the elegance, it has always been Touga who handled speech and body with such consummate certainty; in the absence of that, all Kyouichi has left are his rough edges, and his aching heart, and the desperate reaching for things too far from him. So Kyouichi reaches out, stretches his hands to span the gap that was always so insurmountable, the space between them that gaped like a chasm; and Touga falls to his touch like the petals of a rose giving way to a gust of wind.

They end up on the bed. Kyouichi is there to begin with, sitting tense with self-conscious strain in the scar-marked shadows of his skin and the invisible brand of Touga’s touch upon him, but Touga gives way so immediately and with such capitulation that Kyouichi isn’t ready to brace himself against the force of it. His fingers touch Touga’s hair, his hand grabs for Touga’s shirt, and Touga topples into him, onto him, like the strength of his body is melting away just at the contact of Kyouichi’s hands. Kyouichi falls back to the sheets behind him with force enough to gust the air from his lungs and jolt the memory of pain through his barely-healed body; but when Touga gasps a breath towards “Sorry” Kyouichi growls in answer and grabs a handful of Touga’s hair to pull the other down to silence against his mouth. He’s expecting resistance, surely, to this too-rough touch, this too-much demand: but Touga collapses to it, his whole body going slack and heavy atop Kyouichi’s as quickly as Kyouichi pulls him down. His weight is crushing, it forces the breath from Kyouichi’s lungs and the thoughts from his head, and it fires him alight, turns his blood to steam and surges want into his half-hard cock and pulls a groan of startled pleasure from his lips. Touga’s palm catches at his shoulder, Touga’s fingers skim against his waist, and Kyouichi kicks to get his knee under him and twists to push up and over at Touga atop him. Their bodies shift as one, moving with more fluidity than Kyouichi can ever recall them finding before, and then Kyouichi has Touga spread out over the sheets beneath him and he can feel the impossibility of this present reality stripping him down to a single certain core of want.

Kyouichi isn’t careful with Touga’s shirt. There are buttons, somewhere, surely, small elegant things tucked away out of seeing behind some carefully pressed seam; but in the moment all he can manage is to pull with whatever distracted piece of himself is left after the panting heat of Touga’s mouth desperate under his own. His fingers find a space beneath a hem, or inside a collar, he doesn’t know and doesn’t lift his head to see: enough that his fingers are pressing to bare skin, enough that he can feel the sound of Touga’s throaty groans breaking themselves to silence against his lips. His movement is clumsy, his actions inelegant and stripped of any put-upon grace by the bone-deep want coursing through him instead, but Touga responds as if Kyouichi is writing poetry against his skin, shuddering and curving up under Kyouichi’s touch as if to give form to the invitation that he can’t form to coherency with his voice muffled by the force of the kissing they are fitting between them. It’s only a matter of time before Kyouichi manages to shove the other’s shirt up towards his shoulders to strip him down to bare skin and panting inhales, and Touga capitulates to that too, giving up his hold on Kyouichi’s own body to sit up enough that Kyouichi can drag the shirt free of his chest. Touga’s hair catches at the collar, tangling and spilling over the angle of it as Kyouichi wrenches the clothing free; and then his shirt is off, tossed forgotten to the side, and Kyouichi is coming back in to catch his hand into the mess of Touga’s hair and bear him back down to the bed.

It’s strange, to move like this. Kyouichi remembers too well the framework of this in the past, of Touga’s hands shoving at his hips and guiding his movement with all the focused attention of someone working through an action as much mechanical as pleasurable; sometimes he got his shirt off first, sometimes he was still fully clothed when they began, but it was always Touga pushing, stripping him and turning him down against the sheets and opening him up with a haste enough to strip any tenderness from the motion. The rhythm was never satisfying, too fast and too slow at the wrong times and in the wrong ways; but now Kyouichi finds himself guiding for the both of them, finds their actions suiting his own desires, his own impulses. He wants to linger in the heat of kissing, wants to relearn the shape of Touga’s mouth under his and wind his fingers far into the crimson spill of Touga’s hair: and so they stay there for what feels an impossible span of time, Kyouichi urging Touga’s mouth to open and Touga clutching against his shoulders and their lips pressing together, tongues tasting the hot inside of each other’s mouths, until Touga’s lips are bruised as red as his hair and Kyouichi can feel his heart hammering on want against the inside of his chest. They’re both hot when he draws back and away: Kyouichi’s skin is mottled with the blotchy flush he always gets at times like this, but even Touga is warmed to a glowing red all across his cheeks and the shift of his shoulders over the bed beneath Kyouichi. His lashes seem heavy, like he’s struggling to keep his eyes open and fixed on Kyouichi over him; his hands are sliding over the other’s body like he’s attempting to map the familiar lines of muscle and tendon at the tips of his fingers. Kyouichi can see how hard Touga is breathing, can hear the catch of heat at the other’s throat with every shuddering inhale he takes; and he can feel the heat of the other’s arousal pressing close against his hip, where his weight is pinning Touga down against the mattress. That would have been enough, before, to bring Touga surging up and in to demand his own physical satisfaction from the tension of Kyouichi’s body; but now he just looks, his lips parted on gasping heat and his lashes shadowing over the color of his eyes and his whole attention turned up to fix on Kyouichi over him like he’s waiting for permission, like he’s begging for indulgence. Kyouichi stares down at Touga’s face, feeling lost, dizzy, like he’s finally tasting the structure of a victory he never thought he would win and never really prepared himself to handle, and when he lifts his hand to move down it’s as much on instinct as intent.

Kyouichi lacks grace. He has never had in himself the flowing elegance that Touga has: his shoulders hunch while Touga’s sway, his height makes him loom rather than falling into Touga’s statuesque grace. His hands are too big, his reactions too sudden; while Touga makes his every action look like art, Kyouichi feels like the world itself conspires against him to put delicate objects in his path to be knocked over by a too-fast movement. Even their hair reflects the gap between them: Touga’s so smooth, so radiant with color, falling around his shoulders in a sheet of perfect crimson while Kyouichi’s twists and knots and tangles itself out of all keeping even when he tries to tie it up and back. Kyouichi’s body is a rival, his natural motion something he has spent his whole life fighting with: but when his fingers press down and his palm weights against the strain at the front of Touga’s pants, Touga shudders as if he’s been struck to the core, as if Kyouichi’s fingers are those of a musician perfectly practiced to play upon the instrument of his body. Kyouichi’s breath leaves his lungs, his fingers curl into a fist where he’s bracing himself against the sheets, but he doesn’t pull away, and when he grinds his palm down harder Touga answers as readily, his back arching and his head going back on a whimper that sounds far more sincere than constructed. It’s unpolished, unthought, from the jerk of his hips under Kyouichi’s hand to the trembling press of his fingers fluttering against Kyouichi’s shoulder; and Kyouichi has never seen anyone or anything as beautiful.

He doesn’t need instruction in this. It’s never been like this with them, has never been so heady-hot and tremblingly uncertain: but Kyouichi has instinct if he lacks grace, and Touga answers every touch he offers, gasps and whimpers and moans as if Kyouichi’s touch is tearing the sounds free from him rather than his own intention. Kyouichi palms against him for a long moment, caught in Touga’s reaction even more than the aching want of his own; and then he pulls away to rock back onto his knees so he can fumble the front of Touga’s pants open.

It’s not a graceful motion. There is almost no seduction in the clumsy grab, in the clumsier pull and drag against buttons and zipper alike; but Touga is panting like he’s the desperate teenager Kyouichi never saw in him before, and Kyouichi finds there is no space left for embarrassment when he’s pulling Touga’s pants open and stripping them down the seemingly endless length of the other’s legs. He has to fall back over the bed to achieve his goal of dragging Touga’s pants off and flinging them haphazardly over the far end of the sheets, but he’s successful, most importantly, and when he looks back up Touga is watching him, his legs trembling with barely-restrained adrenaline and his eyes wide and dark and fixed on Kyouichi as if he can’t remember how to breathe with the other before him.

Kyouichi comes back in slowly. He’s seen Touga naked before, from the perspective of the bed or, on a very few precious occasions, from a position straddling the other’s lap; he’s never seen Touga like this, spread out across the sheets before him and with his eyes so wide he looks almost frightened, like he thinks Kyouichi has any interest at all in causing him pain. Kyouichi reaches out to brace himself over Touga’s shoulder, frowning attention as he works his hand in to the sheets so he won’t pull against Touga’s hair pooling out beneath them, and then he reaches down again to return his touch to the other’s length. Touga’s lashes flutter at the contact, his hips twitch up to meet Kyouichi, but his teeth catch pressure at his lip instead of sound, and when he lifts his hand it’s to touch at the back of Kyouichi’s neck as if to brace himself. Kyouichi wraps his fingers into a hold -- as gentle as he can, since elegance is so beyond him -- and when he draws up it’s slowly, in answer more to the tension flickering so clear under Touga’s expression than to his own radiant desire. Kyouichi wants to touch, wants to seize hold of this impossibility so startlingly within his grasp at last, but Touga is shaking underneath him, his forehead creasing on the start of what looks very nearly like panic, and Kyouichi has never before seen that look on Touga’s face. Touga has always been a flower, too far out of reach for Kyouichi’s grasping fingers stained with thornprick blood to reach; but now he’s in Kyouichi’s palms, cradled in the awkward span of them, and all Kyouichi can see are the weight of petals beautiful and delicate enough to show bruises at the first too-rough touch. So he strokes carefully, gently, coaxing Touga towards heat instead of forcing him into it, and beneath him Touga shuts his eyes, and pants for air, and flushes red all over the arch of his cheekbones.

Kyouichi wouldn’t mind staying as they are. His heart is beating an earthquake rhythm in his chest, a pattern that reminds him distantly of the rumble of an engine and the purr of toxic seduction at his ears; but this is deeper, more solid, something grounded in more than movement and haste. He wants more, wants Touga, wants everything; and at the same time he can’t look away from the play of emotion across Touga’s face, can’t stop trying to read clarity into the tremor at Touga’s forehead and the part of his lips. Touga’s shifting under him, strange, near-helpless motions as his body responds more clearly to Kyouichi’s intent than his own; his heel catches at the bed, his knees draw in close together as if to protect himself, as if he’s trying to hide the pale spread of his skin even as his hips buck up towards Kyouichi’s dragging grip. It’s strange and strained, pressure and panic moving in lockstep with each other, until Kyouichi’s heart is racing faster on adrenaline of his own, on fear for something he can’t put a name to but can read from Touga’s expression all the same. It’s something of pain, something of fear, a flinching back from a terror of unknown nightmares, and Kyouichi gasps a breath and speaks before he can think.

“We don’t have to do this.” The words are too loud, they fall like stones into the strained quiet around them; Touga tenses and opens his eyes at once to gaze shock up at Kyouichi over him. Kyouichi’s cheeks heat with self-consciousness, all his set-aside awkwardness called back to life by the focus of Touga’s eyes on him; but he’s used to that, at least, he knows how to grimace his way past that discomfort and struggle on for more. “If you want to stop all you have to do is say so.”

Touga stares at Kyouichi. The tension in his expression is gone, chased aside by the force of shock so visible it has claimed every part of his face for itself: Kyouichi can feel his face burning scarlet with embarrassment as his grip on Touga stalls and stutters, as his rhythm gives way to clumsy uncertainty again. He stops what he’s doing, going still as he frowns down at Touga under him, and for a heartbeat they’re both still as they are, Touga lying tense and uncomfortable in his own body while Kyouichi leans in over him with sweat prickling at the back of his neck and his face glowing into heat like a flame. Kyouichi can only stand it for a moment; then he’s ducking his head in a futile attempt to hide his face while he eases his fingers on Touga’s length to pull away.

The touch at his hair is startling. Kyouichi doesn’t jump at the contact but it’s a near thing; it’s more than enough to pull his gaze up to Touga’s face again and stall his motion on shock. Touga’s palm is still at the back of his neck, still bracing them together at that point of contact; but he has his other hand up too, now, his fingers reaching to wind into the wave of Kyouichi’s pulled-back hair.

“You should take this down,” he says, his tone as level as if he didn’t hear Kyouichi’s words at all, as if they’re sitting over a cup of tea instead of pressing together over the sheets of a childhood bed. Fingers catch at the tie of Kyouichi’s hair, the pressure gives way at once, and the weight of it falls loose, toppling down around Kyouichi’s shoulders like a river set free of the dam holding it back. Kyouichi stares at Touga beneath him, caught to stillness by surprise as his hair falls down to curl over his shoulders and frame Touga’s face; and beneath him Touga smiles with a softness Kyouichi had forgotten he could show and slides his fingers up into Kyouichi’s hair.

“I like the way you look like this,” Touga says, as if that’s explanation enough; and then his hand is pulling, and Kyouichi is ducking in, and their mouths are coming together again. Touga is still trembling, Kyouichi can feel it the more clearly under his lips and against the fit of his chest pressing close to the other’s; but his mouth is insistent, and when Kyouichi tightens his hand experimentally Touga groans audible encouragement in the back of his throat. Kyouichi huffs a breath through his nose, and strokes up to resume his rhythm, and beneath him, against the soft sheets of the bed, Touga lets his knees relax and shifts to spread his thighs open. Kyouichi’s breath sticks, his heart skips on a beat, but the invitation is too clear to mistake, and on his next stroke he only hesitates for a moment before loosening his grip and twisting his hand to press his fingers down past the base of Touga’s cock. He’s gentle in his motion, careful over the curls of dark hair and taut weight of the other’s balls to give Touga time to speak, to react, to so much as catch a breath to stop him, but Touga’s fingers stay wound into his hair, and Touga’s breath still comes with panting heat against his mouth, and Kyouichi keeps going, farther down and back over the space between Touga’s thighs, trailing his fingertips to follow the heat of the other’s body to the tension at his entrance. Kyouichi’s fingers press to strange-soft skin, his heart drops as if in free-fall, and underneath him Touga blurts “There’s lube in the bedside table” in a tone so strained that Kyouichi can hardly recognize the resonance of the other’s voice on the words.

Kyouichi ducks his head. “Okay,” he says. He slides his hand away from the heat of Touga’s body, and the promise of Touga’s skin, and when he looks up Touga is moving too, drawing his hands free from the clinging weight of Kyouichi’s hair and twisting up and onto his side so he can stretch and reach for the table. Kyouichi leans in over him, moving with significantly less grace but a somewhat better angle to reach for the drawer Touga is pulling open, and when he returns it’s with the aforementioned bottle slick in his hand.

It’s still full, or so nearly so that Kyouichi can’t tell the difference; the detail is minor but a relief all the same, a measure of comfort to the jealous strain that comes so easily to him. It means nothing, it proves nothing; but it lets him rock back onto his knees without clenching pressure at his jaw, and lets him spill slick across his fingers without hesitating over the thought of those that came before him. The liquid is thinner than Kyouichi expects it to be and it spills more readily; he has to catch some of it against his palm to keep it from dripping over the sheets, and even then some splashes to soak into the fabric. Kyouichi grimaces, frustrated again by this further proof of his lack of experience, of his clumsy uncertainty; but Touga doesn’t comment, doesn’t so much as huff a laugh. He’s not even looking, when Kyouichi tips his head to glance up at him; he’s lying flat on the bed again, his shoulders flush with the sheets and one arm angled up and over his face to shadow his eyes. All Kyouichi can see of his expression is the open part of his lips, still flushed from Kyouichi’s mouth and parted around the pace of Touga’s too-fast breathing, and for a moment Kyouichi hesitates again, unsure all over again of Touga’s willingness. He takes a breath, wondering if he should ask again, if he should confirm the other’s consent, and Touga speaks without lifting his arm from over his face. “Just do it, Saionji.”

Kyouichi grimaces unseen. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You want to have me though.” Touga’s voice is clear and unhesitating; it makes Kyouichi’s face burn just to hear the fact of it stated so clearly and with so little fanfare. “It’ll be easier if you prepare me first.” He shifts his knee on the bed a little wider, as if to pull Kyouichi’s attention down to the inside line of his thigh by force. “You don’t need to be shy.”

Kyouichi would like to protest. Touga still has his arm angled up over his face to hide his eyes, to cover the line of his cheekbones; for all his easy speech there’s something there he doesn’t want to be seen, something he’s less willing to share than the pale lines of his body laid out in front of Kyouichi. But his voice is dipping towards teasing, adopting a worldly lilt that sets Kyouichi’s jaw on frustration even as his cheeks flare, and whatever protest he might give is stripped to incoherence by the hiss of air past his teeth instead. He drops the bottle in his hand without paying attention to where it falls, whether to the sheets alongside him or toppling over the edge to the floor, and when he reaches out it’s to press his hand against the inside of Touga’s thigh, just above the angle of his knee. Touga slides his legs wider at the touch, moving as quickly as if Kyouichi’s uncertain motion is a demand, and then there’s just Kyouichi’s slick fingers, and Touga’s waiting body, and the motion that is as much a struggle for him as for Touga himself. Kyouichi hesitates for a moment, uncertainty getting the better of him in spite of Touga’s taunting invitation; and then he sets his jaw, and hunches his shoulders, and reaches out to touch.

Touga gives way at once. There’s an ease to the motion, a practiced relaxation in his body as he huffs a breath; Kyouichi barely has to push at all to urge the slick strain of his middle finger up and into the other’s body. It’s a little uncanny, to have the action prove so simple in this direction: Kyouichi remembers too clearly the strain and ache that came with his first experience of this, when it was him lying face down against the sheets and closing his fingers hard on a pillow to hold himself steady against the rough urging of Touga’s touch. It seems backwards to have it be so easy, to feel how quickly his touch slides into intimacy; stranger still to have none of the physical feedback, to be the one giving instead of receiving. Kyouichi wonders if it was as unformed for Touga in his position, if he was similarly directionless as to the ache and pressure that is most of what Kyouichi recalls from those times; there’s nothing for him to gauge his movements, nothing he can gain traction on even when he looks up to Touga’s face. Touga’s eyes are shadowed, his arm as slack with forced relaxation as the open line of his thighs; his lips are parted, his breathing coming smooth. It’s like he’s somewhere else, as if Touga himself has entirely given way to just the image of him, a sketch of the man instead of the reality; it makes Kyouichi’s skin prickle with discomfort even as he pushes deeper into the welcoming heat of Touga’s body under his.

“Are you okay?” he asks as he draws back, working through the rhythm of almost-a-stroke in preparation to offer more. “I can slow down if you need me to.”

Touga coughs over a sound that is unmistakably a laugh, however repressed it may be. “I’m fine,” he says, with condescension dripping off the purr of the words. He lifts his arm from his eyes for a moment and tips his head down to twist a smirk in Kyouichi’s direction; it’s sharp enough that Kyouichi almost doesn’t notice the fact that Touga’s eyes are still distant and dark. “Do you need some additional encouragement to step up to this role?”

Kyouichi’s face burns to crimson. “ _No_ ,” he snaps, and ducks down to give up the teasing in Touga’s eyes to focus on his fingers instead. “I’m fine.” He draws his touch back, hesitating for a moment before be continues; but Touga doesn’t sound like he’s in pain, and he truly does feel relaxed in every way Kyouichi has to judge by. The thought of the intimacy of this knowledge flares another wave of heat over his cheeks and down the length of his spine, and Kyouichi has to clear his throat roughly before he pulls his touch back to couple a pair of fingers together and try the greater strain. It ought to be harder, ought to be more of an effort; but Touga eases to that too, opening for Kyouichi’s touch with just a huffed exhale of release, and Kyouichi is pushing forward and into him, sinking the whole length of his fingers far into the give of Touga’s body. The feel of it is intoxicating enough to burn his cheeks with something more than self-consciousness, with heat that has nothing at all to do with embarrassment, and Kyouichi doesn’t wait for Touga’s urging to draw his fingers back and press in again to map out the rhythm of intimacy between them.

Touga is quiet for a few minutes. Kyouichi’s head is ducked down, his attention fixed on the inside line of Touga’s thighs and the rhythm of his wrist moving; his focus is too narrow to make space for the shadows lining Touga’s face or the languid weight pinning him down to the bed. He’s just moving, lost in the pull of his arm and the spread of Touga’s legs, until he’s following the rhythm he’s set more out of habit than to move towards a goal. His breathing is coming harder, his motion taking on a clearer form, and then there’s the sound of Touga taking a deliberate inhale, and: “Are you planning to do that all night?”

Touga still has his arm over his face when Kyouichi looks up, still has his shoulders relaxed against the sheets. He looks calm, languid, nearly bored; even the heat of his arousal has faded somewhat to leave his cock heavy with softness against his hip. It feels like judgment, as if even in this Kyouichi has been found wanting by Touga’s standards; it’s petulant hurt that surges up Kyouichi’s spine, that hunches his shoulders into defensive frustration as his rhythm stalls out. “Am I _boring_ you?”

Touga lifts his hand and waves it through the air to brush aside Kyouichi’s hurt as something unimportant and inconsequential. “Do as you like,” he says. “I just thought you might want to take more action to satisfying yourself.”

Kyouichi stares at Touga. The other looks graceful as ever, beautiful and bored, as if the press of Kyouichi’s fingers inside him is something to be tolerated more than appreciated, a necessary price to pay for the ultimate goal of them coming together. It makes Kyouichi think of high school, makes him remember the desperate motion of overheated bodies acting with more force than satisfaction and those rare, blissful moments of pleasure, sharp and startling like stars flickering to clarity from behind the cover of clouds. There’s something dismissive to the weight of Touga’s body, like he’s not even paying attention, as if it could be anyone at all kneeling between the open spread of his legs; and something in Kyouichi’s jaw tightens, something in his chest knots to intention.

“Fine,” he says. “I will” and he resumes his motion, with more force and focus behind it this time. Touga huffs a breath, his mouth curves up onto an amused smile, but he doesn’t voice protest, and Kyouichi turns his head down to fix his attention on the motion of his fingers working up and into the other. It’s easy to find a rhythm -- there’s no resistance in Touga’s body, nothing but complete surrender in every part of him -- but it’s exactly strain that Kyouichi wants to find, the flicker of sensation beyond simple pressure tightening around his fingers and tensing in Touga’s muscles.

It’s hard to track. Kyouichi has gotten better at this in himself, has gained skill just from exploring the heat of his body with his own fingers and the lull of a quiet room to urge him on, but the perspective is different, like this, and he doesn’t have any guidance of slow-building friction to lead him. There’s just the strain at his shoulders, raw and frustrated and more desperate than it should be, but he can’t pretend to have anything more to offer Touga than that effort, the same that is all he has ever had. All he can do is try, try and hope that for once it will prove enough, and it’s just as the thought is drifting through his mind that Touga’s breath catches, Touga’s legs flex, and Kyouichi loses his rhythm to surprise at the feel of Touga pulling suddenly, sharply tense around him.

They’re both still for a moment. Kyouichi’s attention has swung up from the ache at his wrist and the pale of Touga’s thighs to the other’s face, where Touga’s arm has slipped up to leave his expression uncovered. His eyes are wide, his mouth is open; he looks shocked, startled out of all his mocking unconcern as if Kyouichi has dragged him forcibly into the present. Kyouichi stares at Touga for a moment, taking in the overt surprise on the other’s features and the flush of heat staining his cheeks; and then he closes his mouth, and presses his lips together, and he draws back to take another stroke up and in. Touga shudders with the force, his forehead creasing and his lips pressing together as if to hold back the reaction in his throat, and Kyouichi can feel a surge of satisfaction run through him as he pulls back to take another thrust, sharper and harder now that he’s certain of himself. Touga’s hips jerk this time, his head angles back as his cheeks flush with color, and Kyouichi keeps going, moving faster now that he’s sure of himself, and he watches heat rise to glow under Touga’s skin in answer to every stroke he takes.

It’s a heady sensation. Kyouichi still has his pants on, still has a knot of unfulfilled desire aching deep down in his belly; but it is better than he imagined to see Touga like this, to have Touga quivering and gasping on the sheets before him as he is. Touga’s eyes are wide, his throat is taut; each push of Kyouichi’s fingers strains another groan out of him, every stroke surges heat that Kyouichi can feel tighten around his touch and can watch bleed color over Touga’s skin. The cool distance of condescension is forgotten, left behind somewhere with those memories of unsatisfying interludes: now there’s just the weight of Touga’s lashes dipping, and Touga’s forehead creasing, and Touga’s mouth coming open as his restraint gives way along with his composure. He presses a hand over his mouth in a vague, half-formed attempt to hold back the sound in his throat, but it just makes him sound more desperate and softens the low resonance of his voice into something almost pleading in its incoherence. Kyouichi keeps going, working Touga into warmth, into heat, urging him on towards the precipice of pleasure while Touga’s eyes glaze out-of-focus and his fingers go slack even where they’re covering his lips; even when Kyouichi stops he can feel the rhythm set into his veins, can feel it forming a drumbeat in time with his heart.

He grabs for the button of his pants, forces them open and shoves them down his hips as part of the same motion that brings him up and pressing closer, and when he reaches for Touga’s hip to brace them Touga is moving too, stretching out with his free hand to catch his fingers at the base of Kyouichi’s cock and steady the other as he comes in. Kyouichi ducks his head to watch what he’s doing, struggling for clarity in the shadowed curtain of his hair falling loose around his shoulders; but Touga’s hold is certain, and Kyouichi’s grip on the other braces them still, and in the end all he has to do is rock his hips forward and let himself follow the guidance of Touga’s fingers to sheathe himself in the slick heat of the other’s body beneath his. Touga gusts a breath and lets Kyouichi’s length go so he can reach for the other’s shoulder instead, and Kyouichi ducks his head in close over Touga and shuts his eyes to focus on the rhythm of his motion. It takes a moment to steady himself, and another for him to find his way back to that set pattern; but then he pulls at Touga’s hip to tilt the other up towards him, and flexes his thighs to adjust his angle, and when Touga tenses around him Kyouichi feels it like the petals of a flower opening into full bloom.

It’s hard to hold the right position. Touga’s hips are tilted up, and Kyouichi’s weight is rocked far back over his knees; for the first few attempts Touga huffs a gasp of frustration as often as a groan of encouragement, until Kyouichi feels shaky and strained on his own clumsiness. But Touga’s hold at Kyouichi’s shoulder doesn’t ease, his fingers still cling tightly enough to speak to the same desire Kyouichi can feel trembling through Touga’s legs open around his hips, and that sheer fact of being wanted, of having something worth offering to Touga’s coolly amused gaze, is enough to keep Kyouichi’s blood running to heat and his cock hard even as his movements stutter into jerky uncertainty. Finally he manages to find the right angle by curving his spine, and rocking in far over Touga’s shoulder, and pulling against the line of the other’s thigh; it’s a strain to hold just himself up at the angle he’s at, much less to steady out Touga’s weight as well, but Kyouichi’s heart is pounding on adrenaline and rational concerns are far beyond him. His movement is instinctive, now, reflex bucking him forward with desperate haste rather than any kind of elegant intention, but it doesn’t matter: Touga is gasping for air under him, is arching and quivering with every thrust Kyouichi takes, and Kyouichi can’t tell if the arousal hot in him is his own or coming secondhand through the bruise-tight grip at his shoulder. He keeps moving, even as his shoulder begins to ache, as his arm begins to tremble, and underneath him Touga lets his hand fall away from his mouth and reaches up instead to press his arm tight around Kyouichi’s shoulders and cling to the support of the other’s body. His head lifts, his forehead presses to pin Kyouichi’s hair against the sweat-slick line of his collarbone, and when Touga rasps over a breath Kyouichi can feel it catch like a sob against him. It’s enough to do what tension couldn’t, what the physical exertion of the present moment utterly failed to achieve, and he interrupts his movement as he catches an inhale and turns to try to see Touga’s face.

“Touga?” Touga’s head is pressing against him, Kyouichi’s hair is tangled into all the spaces between them; all Kyouichi can see of Touga’s face is the line of his jaw and a lock of red hair caught to stick against the damp heat of his mouth. Kyouichi scowls and lets Touga’s hip go so he can brace himself and reach up to pull at the other’s hair in an effort to get a better view of his face. “Did I hurt you?” Kyouichi tugs at Touga’s hair to pull it aside, to glimpse what expression the other is wearing to go with that sound in his throat, but Touga turns his head away, and when he gasps a breath it’s so close that Kyouichi can’t hear it as anything other than white noise.

“No,” Touga says, in a voice so dark and strained Kyouichi isn’t sure he would recognize it in other circumstances. The arm around Kyouichi’s shoulders tightens; fingers curl in to pull hard against his hair. “Keep moving.”

Kyouichi doesn’t think of disobedience. Perhaps he should. Maybe he should take a breath, and collect himself, and force Touga into whatever vulnerability he is trying so hard to hide against Kyouichi’s shoulder. But his heart is pounding, and Touga is tight as a strung bow beneath him, and the demand of the other’s words is more than Kyouichi can think to resist. He moves, sharply, curving himself forward to fit against the demands of Touga’s body, and when Touga strains over a gasp Kyouichi reaches between them to fit his hand into the heated shadows. His hold on Touga’s cock is awkward, coming from a strange angle and with more force than he meant it to have, but the sound Touga makes against him is raw, and the fingers at Kyouichi’s shoulder dig in hard, and when Kyouichi moves it’s to answer the unvoiced demands of Touga clinging to him. His hips come forward to work in against the pressure of Touga tightening around him, his fingers curl to fist against the blankets beneath them, and his hand moves in counterpoint, jerking up with desperate haste to pull that choking heat up and free of Touga’s chest. Touga’s legs tighten, his thighs press close against Kyouichi’s hips, and Kyouichi can feel his body straining towards some edge, can feel the flutter of reflexive reaction in Touga around the breathless pace of Kyouichi’s movement. His back aches, his arm throbs, his shoulder is stinging protest under the tear of Touga’s nails; but Touga is gasping, panting incoherencies too low for Kyouichi to hear, and Kyouichi thinks he would rather die than stop now. He pushes forward, dragging against the sheets while Touga’s fingernails tear at his skin, while Touga’s legs tighten a vice grip around his hips; and then Touga chokes off an inhale, and clutches at Kyouichi’s shoulder, and his whole body spasms with the relief of pleasure as his cock spills over Kyouichi’s anxious hold. Kyouichi gusts an exhale of relief, feeling the easing of Touga’s release as if it’s his own, and he keeps moving, stroking Touga forward and through his pleasure while his legs shake and his wrist cramps.

Touga holds to him for another minute, clinging so tight Kyouichi can feel the strain in his arm; and then he heaves a sigh, and lets his hold go to fall back down over the bed. His face is flushed red, well past the shading of flattering blush and into sunburn-bright overexertion, and his hair is sticking to the sweat at his forehead; but there’s something endless in his eyes as he gazes up at the ceiling over them, something soft with innocent surprise, as if he’s a child shown something wonderful for the first time in his life. It undoes the years of hardness at his lips and against his forehead, unravels him back into the boy he was when Kyouichi used to bruise his fingers on the appearance of kindness, into a child younger still, wholly untouched by the cruel realities of the world, and Kyouichi can feel himself flicker like a mirror, like Touga’s grace is showing him the path back to his own childhood desires, when pleasure was simple and untarnished by guilt or anger or disappointment. It stalls his breath in his chest, stammers a catch over the rhythm of his movement, and when Touga tips his head to smile up at him Kyouichi thinks there can be nothing in the world as alluring as that curve at the other’s lips. His shoulders tip in, his body shaping itself to Touga’s under him with all the ease of instinct, and when he slides his hand free from Touga’s softening cock it’s only to settle his fingers against the other’s hip instead to hold them together against the slow pace of his exhausted body. Heat builds in him slow, a far-off wave cresting towards inevitability all on its own while he stands still to watch it; and then Touga’s fingers brush against his hair, and Kyouichi shuts his eyes and lets the want in him surge into pleasure enough to eclipse everything at once.

He comes back to reality eventually. The startled satisfaction in Touga’s face, the languid relief in Kyouichi’s body: they are as transient as everything else Kyouichi has ever known, they fall away from his grasp even when he tries to hold them. The room is hot, stuffy and sticky with their exertion and the humid sweat of their bodies; Kyouichi’s muscles hurt, and his shoulder is stinging, and he feels like he’s drowning in the undone weight of his hair. He holds still as long as he can stand it, so long as satisfaction and exhaustion are still holding their own against the discomfort of his position, and then finally he pushes himself up with a groan so he can pull back and away from Touga under him.

Touga lets him go without trying to hold him. His arm has fallen slack over the blankets, seemingly too heavy for him to bear lifting it; his hair is spread out into a rose-red halo around him, his eyes are as dark as the night that has fallen outside. He’s watching Kyouichi but his expression is unreadable: there’s no trace of the selfish smirk that used to linger at his lips when he was done taking his pleasure from the other, none of the self-satisfied amusement that Kyouichi used to find waiting for him when the haze of his own rare satisfaction cleared. Touga is just looking at him, gazing at Kyouichi as if he’s startled by the other’s presence, as if he’s only just seeing him properly for the first time. It reminds Kyouichi of the way Touga used to look at him, sometimes, when the clatter of their shinai gave way to the weight of a bruise landing against Touga’s skin instead of his own; it makes him feel strange, undone from time and from his own identity, until the only thing he can think to do is pull away over the end of the bed.

“I need a shower,” Kyouichi says, aware that he sounds petulant but not able to strip the tone from his words. “My hair’s a mess.”

Touga’s lashes flutter but his mouth doesn’t shift, his expression remains as unruffled as the smooth surface of a pool deep enough to drown in. “Of course,” he says. “Help yourself. What’s mine is yours.”

Kyouichi huffs a breath and pushes back to slide off the bed and get to his feet, feeling more naked now than he has at any moment before; but Touga doesn’t say anything and doesn’t move at all. He just stays right as he is, lying over the sheets and gazing at Kyouichi with so much focus in his eyes that Kyouichi can’t figure out how to meet it. He ducks his head to scowl at the floor, struggling to regain his footing in a moment that has gone strained and strange, and finally he clears his throat and speaks.

“Are you okay?”

The answer seems obvious. They’ve just had sex that was evidently satisfying for the both of them; surely Touga won’t be regretting that with his skin still flushed with afterglow. But Kyouichi can’t help but ask, can’t help but feel a need for the reassurance, and when he looks up it’s to meet Touga’s gaze, in case he can read some sincerity from the other’s face.

Touga is staring at Kyouichi. His expression has been knocked into surprise again: his eyes are wide, his lips are parted. For a moment they gaze at each other, Touga shocked and Kyouichi frowning; and then Touga’s gaze eases, his mouth curves, and when he smiles at Kyouichi there’s a simple honesty to it that takes Kyouichi’s breath away.

“Yes,” Touga says, sounding warmer than Kyouichi has ever heard him, tender in a way that only the illusion of nostalgia has ever granted him before. He turns on the bed, shifting to roll over onto his side and pillow his head on his arm, but that smile remains, and the warmth in his voice clings to the words as he goes on speaking. “Thank you.”

He might be thanking Kyouichi for asking. He could be thanking him for the pleasure, for the indulgence, for the whole history of their sometimes-friendship. Kyouichi doesn’t know why he’s so sure it’s for something else, for something that runs deeper than he can see, something he can’t read even looking right into the weight of Touga’s eyes; but he is, and in the awareness of that all he can manage as an answer is to duck his head into a nod before turning to make his way to the bathroom.

He feels Touga’s attention on him the whole way.


	8. Implicit

Kyouichi watches the dawn break through the windows of his room alone the next morning.

He’s spent the night on his own. Touga was gone by the time he returned from the steam of the shower, leaving nothing but rumpled bedsheets and the haze of heat in the air to speak to his presence at all. There was no disappointment in his absence; Kyouichi had expected no different, and he appreciates the silence that comes with having the space of the room to himself. He could have returned to the bed itself: the sheets are wrinkled but still more than warm enough to let him gain a few hours of sleep, and his morning will be more comfortable with some measure of rest to ease the exhaustion in his body. But Kyouichi stands in the doorway to the bedroom, and gazes at the bed and the ghosts he imagines he can see there, and when he finally looks away and steps inside it’s to make for the armchairs set in front of the windows instead. One of the soft robes hanging by the door makes for warmth enough, when he wraps it around his shoulders and draws his feet up at the edge of the chair to catch them underneath the soft fall of the fabric, and Kyouichi leans back against the support behind him, and rests his head against the edge of the chair back, and lets his attention wander idly over the garden gilded to silver by the moonlight.

He’s still there when the morning comes. His foot has fallen asleep where the angle of his knee has pressed hard against the arm of the chair, and his position has slipped steadily farther and farther down the support of his seat as exhaustion settled itself into his limbs, but he doesn’t so much as turn his head to look back to the temptation of the bed. The garden is beautiful by moonlight, striking enough to hold his gaze if not his thoughts, and he doesn’t need to look to the shadows of the bed to see the color of Touga’s hair or to hear the sound of Touga’s voice breaking onto strain. The details are ringing in his ears and lingering at the shift of his lashes, until it’s only the brilliance of dawn that starts to chase them back into the space of memory and leave Kyouichi free to resume his life. Kyouichi blinks with the first burn of daylight, squinting against the flare of pain that comes with the too-much illumination against eyes dry and aching from a night spent awake; and then he shakes his head, and unfolds his legs, feeling decades older than he is from the aching pressure that has collected in all his joints. He gets to his feet and stands before the table for a minute, grimacing and shifting to work out some of the tension while numbness gives way to the prickle of returning sensation at his foot and ankle, and then he turns away from the window and towards the bathroom to take on the process of returning himself to respectability.

He has a visitor when he returns from rinsing his face and smoothing his untied hair to as much restraint as it ever has. The bed is still rumpled, the room still all but empty; but there’s a woman standing by the table, now, her head turned to look out the window rather than seeking for Kyouichi himself. Kyouichi hesitates in the doorway, wondering if he should offer some kind of a greeting or some other indication of his presence just to keep from startling her, but when Nanami turns her head to see him there’s no sign of any surprise in the calm of her expression.

“Kyouichi,” she says. They gaze at each other for a minute. Nanami doesn’t flinch from meeting Kyouichi’s eyes: there’s no trace of judgment in her expression that he can find, even when he looks for it. She just looks at him with more neutral composure than he thought her mistress of, and then she turns her head and lifts a hand to touch against the folded white set atop the table. “I brought your cleaned shirt.”

“Oh.” Kyouichi comes forward from the doorway to join Nanami where she’s standing in the pool of sunlight spilling through the glass of the window. The light tinges her hair into princess gold, as if the warmth of it is collecting to pool against the strands; it’s gentle to her features too, or perhaps it’s time that has so softened the set of her mouth, maybe it’s happiness that has eased the weight of her lashes to kindness instead of judgment. Kyouichi watches her sideways as he reaches out to take the carefully folded shirt and shake it out before him: the bloodstains are entirely gone, impossible to find even when he looks for them, and the tears have been mended so neatly he can hardly see the marks. It’s thoughtful work, showing a patience and attention to detail he can’t imagine from the Nanami he once knew, or, at least, not something he can imagine being directed to anyone other than her brother.

He lays the shirt over the back of the chair in front of him and moves to untie his robe and slip it off his shoulders. It’s only as the sunlight hits his bare skin that he realizes he may be overstepping some implicit boundary, that he thinks to look back to gauge Nanami’s reaction with an apology forming itself on his lips. But Nanami isn’t even looking at him: her gaze is fixed out the window again, her expression thoughtful like she’s seeing something more than the lush greenery filling the garden. Her hand is lifted to rest against the back of the chair next to her; the morning sunlight catches the diamond ring on her finger to sparkle light into the whole of the room. Kyouichi gazes at it for a minute, letting the flecks of light play over his vision and glow in his thoughts, and then he ducks his head and reaches to drape the robe over the chair so he can collect his shirt and pull it back up and around him.

“Touga said you were engaged,” he says. He’s trying for a casual tone but the words feel awkward and tense in his throat, as if they’re borrowing a measure of jealousy he doesn’t feel. He grimaces and pulls harder at a button to force it into place as he tries to undo his clumsy tone with softer words. “That’s great.”

“I am,” Nanami says. When Kyouichi glances up at her she hasn’t moved to so much as look away from the garden on the other side of the window; the only shift in her expression is at the curve of her lips, where she’s holding the very beginning of a smile as if it’s something too precious and fragile, yet, to be shared.

Kyouichi pushes the last of his buttons into place and lets his hands fall to his sides. There’s a pause; he wonders if he should leave, if he’s done enough to make a graceful exit, if this should be his cue to depart. Touga would, he thinks, would duck his head and turn to sweep out the door as if an actor leaving the stage in glory; but Kyouichi’s not Touga, and he never has been, and trying to be has only ever brought him hurt. So he reaches out instead to grab at the back of the chair with tension-tight fingers, and he clears his throat to speak.

“I’m glad,” he says. His voice comes too loud, nearly enough to echo off the enclosed space around them, but he pushes on to keep speaking even as Nanami’s head turns towards him. “I hope they treat you the way you deserve.”

Nanami’s mouth twitches at the very corner, quivering on the beginning of that smile forming itself to clarity. “They do,” she says. Kyouichi looks up at her properly; Nanami is watching him, her forehead creased as if on confusion but her mouth curving wider as he meets her gaze. “They’re good to me.” Her gaze slips down to the shine of her ring in the light; she lifts her hand for a moment, shifting her finger like she’s entranced by the bright of the jewel. Her smile widens. “We’re very happy together.”

Kyouichi huffs a breath, feeling illogically as if some pressure has eased from his chest, like he’s surfaced from under the cold dark of an ocean and come up into the clean air of summer sunlight. “Good,” he says, with more certainty in his tone this time, and when Nanami lifts her head to look back to him he can match her smile with a sincere one of his own. “I’m glad that you’re happy.” He takes a step forward and lifts his hand, feeling he should offer some kind of physical contact to underscore his congratulations, but he’s not sure where to touch, and in the end his fingers just hover awkwardly in the space over Nanami’s elbow before he lets his hand fall. “You have my sincere congratulations.”

Nanami takes a breath and turns away from the window to face Kyouichi fully as she reaches out to catch his hand in hers. Her grip is warmer than Kyouichi has ever felt it before, her hold more steady; the force of it is guidance enough for him to follow without any words at all.

“Thank you,” she says, her voice ringing with more truth than he has ever heard from her before. When she smiles the glow of it spreads across her whole face to sparkle in her eyes and dimple against her cheeks. “That means a lot to me, Kyouichi.”

They hesitate for a moment, caught in the strange distance of the handshake but neither of them loosening their hold. Finally it’s Kyouichi who huffs a breath, and lifts his free arm, and steps forward to catch Nanami in the awkward force of a hug. His shoulders relax at once, even with the self-conscious strain burning to heat over his cheeks, and Nanami’s polite reserve melts as quickly as she lifts her own arm to hug him back. Their clasped hands are still caught between them but Nanami is holding tight enough that Kyouichi barely even notices the awkwardness of the position; he’s too busy feeling the ache of affection in his chest at the familiarity of this brotherly contact that he’s never had the self-awareness to offer before.

“It’s good to have seen you,” Kyouichi says against the gold of Nanami’s hair. “Really, congratulations.”

Nanami’s hold on him tightens, just for a moment; then she’s letting go, and Kyouichi follows suit, letting his hold on Nanami’s shoulders and his grip on her hand give way at the same time he steps back and away. Nanami is still smiling, albeit with more color to her cheeks than she had before, and she doesn’t hesitate to beam up at Kyouichi before her.

“I’ll send you an invitation to the wedding,” she says. “I hope you can make it.”

Kyouichi smiles. “I do too,” he says. He clears his throat and takes a step back. “Thanks for your hospitality.” He pushes his hand into his pocket and lifts the other into a self-conscious wave. “See you.” Nanami smiles in answer, and waves a farewell of her own, and then she turns back to the window and Kyouichi moves to the door to let himself out into the hallway.

The house is very quiet once he’s free of the bedroom; the sound of his footsteps echoes off the walls around him, catching in on itself to resonate as if the house is truly as empty and still as it appears. Kyouichi can feel the weight of the walls around him, pressing down as if peering at an intruder; he wonders if this is how it feels for Touga when Nanami is absent, if after his sister’s marriage Touga will be left to fade into the shadows of this too-large and too-silent house himself, a rose drying to permanent perfection as time slips away from it. Kyouichi pauses in the entry hall, looking up to the height of the ceiling overhead, his attention lingering on the shadows half-hiding the art displayed on the walls; and then there’s a breath, a catch of an inhale, and Kyouichi’s gaze slides away from oil on canvas and lands on the white of a jacket barely visible alongside the front door.

Touga’s waiting for him. He’s wearing a pale coat, all slim lines and dark trim that reminds Kyouichi of their student council uniforms, that brings to mind the rattle of an elevator and the smell of tea and roses. His hair is smooth, cleared of whatever tangles Kyouichi’s bedsheets and fingers wound into it; he looks pristine, as if he truly has travelled himself back into time to those days of duels and deals and adolescence. Kyouichi pauses in the middle of the foyer, his feet stopping him without the allowance of his mind, and at the door Touga takes a breath under the weight of Kyouichi’s gaze and speaks.

“I hope I’ll see you again.” His voice is very smooth, very polished; if Kyouichi didn’t know every nuance of that tone, if he hadn’t spent long years haunted by the resonance of that voice, he wouldn’t hear the strain under it, the tremor of tension that bleeds into the last word. Touga hears it too; he cuts himself off, his lips still parted, before he ducks his head forward so his hair falls in front of his face to hide his expression. Kyouichi can hear the effort of the inhale Touga takes like electricity shivering over his skin even before the other speaks, more softly than what went before. “I want to see you again.”

Kyouichi lets the silence weight around them for a time. Touga is standing by the door, his shoulders angled into a surrender like Kyouichi’s never seen from him before; Kyouichi feels himself steady, certain, as if his feet are flat on the ground for the first time in the whole of their relationship. His heart is beating hard, thudding itself to pressure over the possibilities of Touga’s words; but this is the wrong place, this is the wrong time, Kyouichi still has the ghosts of last night flickering too blinding-bright to look at when he shuts his eyes. So he gazes at Touga’s hair, at that color faded nearly to a match of his own unbound locks by the darkness: and then he clears his throat, and says “I have your number” with no more than gruff accuracy on his tone. Touga’s head lifts, his gaze comes up; and Kyouichi looks away, and steps forward to open the door and let himself out into the daylight.

Touga doesn’t try to stop him. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t reach, doesn’t try to span the careful distance Kyouichi forms between them as the other moves out of the shadows of the house and away from the lingering weight of the past. But the door doesn’t shut as Kyouichi walks away, and when he glances back Touga is standing in the doorway watching him go. He’s still within the house, his shoulders tipped to angle him back like he’s thinking of turning away once more: but the wind is catching at his hair, and the sunlight is burnishing it to crimson, and Kyouichi can feel the ache of desire in his chest like a magnetism too deep-down in his veins for him to strip it free. He watches Touga for a moment, looking at that hair the color of roses, the color of blood, the color of love: and then he turns, and he walks away into the solitude he needs for himself before he makes that inevitable, inescapable call.

He has always been drawn to the blaze of Touga’s hair, to the shadows of Touga’s eyes; but the next time will be on Kyouichi’s terms, and after Touga answers.


End file.
